


The Dreaming

by Asynca



Series: The Camera Loves You-Verse [2]
Category: Tomb Raider (Video Game)
Genre: <3, F/F, I'd never have been a professional writer now, I've been meaning to migrate this from ff.net for ages, LITERALLY, S.S. Endurance - Freeform, if I'd never written this, thank you tomb raider fandom for your support, the story that spawned my writing career
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-28
Updated: 2017-05-28
Packaged: 2018-11-05 18:03:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 46
Words: 252,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11018679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asynca/pseuds/Asynca
Summary: Sequel to 'The Camera Loves You'. Lara and Sam escape for a well-deserved holiday all the way down in Australia, but don't manage to escape anything at all. Still negotiating their fledgling relationship, they get caught in the middle of a fight between mining companies and beings who've watched over the land for 50,000 years. Contains some elements of Legend & Underworld.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to the Wurundjeri woman, Mary M., who I was working with at the time who so generously volunteered her time to read through the chapters that pertain to Aboriginal folks to check for cultural sensitivity, as well as the two Aboriginal Tomb Raider fans who gave me tips along the way. I am forever in your debt! 
> 
> In Australia, it's respectful to acknowledge that meetings and events take place on Aboriginal land at the beginning of them. The acknowledgements go something like this: I'd like to pay my respects to the elders of the nations mentioned in this fanfic, both past and present, and welcome any Aboriginal folks who are reading this work. I hope we can move together to a place of justice and partnership.

"We totally should have had a house-cooling for you," Sam said, standing in the middle of my empty flat in her winter coat. "Or whatever you call the opposite of a housewarming." She wandered over to the window, looking out onto the street. It was late November and already flurries of snow were collecting on the glass. In this weather 'house-cooling' seemed appropriate.

"It's weird to think this is the last time I'll see this view. It kind of feels like _my_ old home and I didn't even live here." She took her mobile out and snapped a picture of the street below.

I wasn't sure I completely agreed with her assessment of not living there. Sure, her name had never actually been on the lease, but she'd slept on the other side of my bed so often while we were at uni that it might as well have been. I hadn't minded. It was always nice having her company, even if she did leave her clothes _everywhere_.

Right now, though, I had the last box in my arms and it was rather heavy. "A bit late to organise anything now," I said, jogging it with a knee. "We have to give the key back this afternoon and we're off tomorrow."

I could see her make a face in the reflection. She turned back to me. "We probably should have waited until after our big vacation to move. Well, whatever," she said, approaching me. "We can just have a huge housewarming when we get back." She held her arms out and received the box from me, groaning dramatically at the weight of it.

"Will you be alright with the stairs?"

She scoffed. "Let's go! I can't _wait_ to see what you think of our new home!"

I hadn't even seen it, actually. I'd been in the midst of spending days and days preparing for some guest lectures at the University of Tokyo while she'd been buried in real estate websites. By the time the lectures were over, Sam was absolutely convinced she'd found us the perfect place and wanted it to be a surprise.

She was so excited about it, how could I say no?

I watched her with some concern as she attempted to navigate the steep stairwell with the box, but I needn't have worried. She was wearing heels that _I_ certainly would have fallen off, but walking as smoothly as if she were wearing runners. At least her ankle was better now, I thought. It seemed she was celebrating not needing to wear the moonboot by cracking out all her most dangerous shoes just as the streets iced over.

When she'd gone I surveyed my flat one last time to make sure I hadn't forgotten anything, poking my head into all the rooms as I switched off the lights.

It was so odd seeing it empty of furniture and my belongings after three years of living here. I had so many memories of this place. If I closed my eyes, I could still picture where everything had been and the way my life was before I'd left for Yamatai.

I heard the sound of Sam's heels walking back up the corridor. She stopped in the doorway, fixing her scarf. "Ready?"

Looking back at my old living room, the only feature was the square of late afternoon sunlight on the carpet.

The end of an era, I thought. "Yeah."

She caught me as I walked past her through the doorway, pulling me against her. The coats she'd bought us were so puffy it felt like there was a pillow between us.

"I used to always imagine doing this," she said, "especially in summer when you answered the door in that thin t-shirt and without a bra on. I could see everything." I cringed as she continued, "These coats don't really provide the same entertainment. I suppose it's all still in there somewhere, though." She ran her gloved hands up the front of my coat as if she could find anything through it. Then, leaning across the space between us, she kissed me.

"Well," My neighbour's voice and the sound of his door opening startled me and I jerked back away from Sam. "On to bigger and better things, eh?" I nearly dropped the keys.

Sam looked completely unruffled about the fact he'd just caught us snogging in the corridor. "You should see the place we're moving to," she told him, and swept her hands out in front of her. It looked quite comical in her quilted coat. "It's really classic."

He was a mid-forties divorcee who'd been living across from me for a year and a half. I know he'd furtively watched Sam a little too closely when she'd been sunbaking on my balcony, but other than that he'd been a lovely neighbour and had always been happy to collect my mail when I'd been away.

Despite being lovely, he did laugh at my discomfort which made me even _more_ uncomfortable. "Don't worry, lass," he said with a wide grin. "Your secret's safe with me. I tell everyone you had that boy around, too. What was his name?"

"Alex," I told him as I pulled the door shut and locked it, "he was just a friend. And it's not a secret— about Sam and I, I mean."

His eyebrows were raised and he and Sam shared a look that I think may have been at my expense. "Right, of course," he said, clearly humouring me, and then held his hand out as I pulled the key from the lock. "Would you like me to return that to the agent for you both? I'm just on my way down to those shops to buy milk."

Sam glanced at me. I tilted my head. "Actually, that would be great," I said, and worked the key he was asking for off my ring and placed it in the palm of one of his gloves.

He cradled it as if it were made of solid gold. "I should keep it and say it belonged to Lara Croft," he said, but I think he was joking. "Maybe I'll sell it on eBay. Did you know they put the rent up on this place and have your name all over the adverts?"

At least, I hoped he was joking because that last part was ridiculous. I didn't even want to play along. "Thanks again," I said and herded Sam down the hallway while she smirked at me.

"I hope your new neighbour has a lot less paparazzi to block the driveway," she called out to him, mostly to tease me. I pretended to smack the back of her head.

He laughed, and turned back to his own door to lock it. "Goodbye, you two."

All of my furniture had been shipped earlier and what was left of my boxes fit into the back of Sam's M-series. While I suspected it may have been physically impossible for a passenger to die in a car that was this expensive, still didn't like the fact it was her car and she was driving.

Sam was oblivious as she buckled herself in. "You're hopeless. I should just take you into the middle of Trafalgar Square and make out with you until you're totally immune to people watching," she said as she nearly backed into the car parked behind us.

While Sam bunny-hopped the car out into traffic, I just stared forward and hoped she wouldn't hit anything. "There's nothing unusual about wanting to keep my private life private," I said, perhaps a little defensively on reflection. "I was the same with boyfriends, it's just that no one really batted an eyelid when I was out with them. I just stand next to you and people already have their mobiles out and pointed at us."

Sam glanced at the rear-view. "Oh, Sweetie, I know. I'm not one of the people you need to convince." She changed lanes without using her blinkers. "Speaking of which…" There was something about her tone.

I groaned and twisted in my seat. Sure enough, there was a car braving the terrible weather to follow us. " _Really_? _This_ is news?" I looked forward again, leaning back heavily into the heated leather.

Sam used her serious reporter voice. "Tonight on CNN: Lara Croft moves in with the amazingly talented director Samantha Nishimura, the woman widely rumoured to be hitting that. More at seven."

That _did_ actually make me smile. I put my hand on her knee, and she glanced down at it with a cheeky smile on her lips. "A bit higher..."

I took my hand away, rolling my eyes. "Yes, _I'm_ the hopeless one," I said with a grin. "You never stop."

"Well, my reputation is well-earned," she joked, pretending to flip her hair. She sobered up quickly, though, letting a brief silence stretch between us before she spoke again. "I know I keep saying it," she said. "But you'll get used to people knowing who you are. Trust me."

She'd said it to me a hundred times, but it wasn't the people knowing who I was that was the actual problem. It was that when people recognised me they took photos and then uploaded them. Those photos would get blogged and reblogged, and then I'd be standing in a queue at the supermarket and I'd see my face in the corner of a magazine with some crazy hook like, " _Fridge Raider?_ _Lara Croft's Shock Confession: 'I can't stop eating!_ '"

Then there were the paparazzi. I wasn't finding being followed everywhere any less disconcerting than it had been initially. Worse, actually, sometimes when I caught people ducking behind corners or slipping into doorways I expected to hear bullets whisking past my head. I hated it.

I'm sure I didn't look like I believed her.

She saw my expression and shrugged. "Anyway, you'll love this new place. It's a small community so people will get over us really quickly, and," she paused for effect, "you can't see the house from the road."

"Sounds perfect," I said, imagining the luxury of being able to go for a jog without people pointing and whispering about Lara Croft to each other.

Part of me felt rather ungrateful complaining about all the attention, though. I _had_ signed up for this. I supposed I just expected to be like Dr Whitman had been: sort of famous in the right circles but still able to carry on with my life as usual.

The interviews and the official press, I'd come to peace with. I didn't mind any of that anymore, and, anyway, Sam was incredibly protective of me whenever I was in front of a camera. It was all the unofficial stories and everything that came with them that were so unbearable.

I wished I could be more like Sam, I thought, looking across at her as she drove. It was all water off a duck's back to her. The magazines could be printing the most awful lies about her and she'd just laugh and put them back on the stand.

She drove us further out of town than I thought she was going to, well out of London and into the countryside. It was a familiar route for me; my parents' estate had been this way. We took the same turnoff, actually, and for a moment I was terrified we might actually be going to my old house. I wouldn't put it past Sam to conspire with my accountant so we could live in it—he was the only one who knew how to unravel it from all the property trusts. I desperately hoped she hadn't, though, because I couldn't do it. It would be too painful to live in that house when my parents weren't in it anymore. I wanted my memories of it to be ones that were filled with the fun parts of my childhood, not ones of big empty houses and no family left.

I got more and more nervous until finally Sam turned off the route into a hamlet I didn't recognise and I was able to relax. We'd just left it when she turned into a driveway ringed by a thick stone fence.

I looked behind us as we left the road. The car that had been following us wasn't anywhere to be seen; I hoped they'd given up and gone home for dinner.

The long driveway lead downhill through a small woodland. The house itself was buried in amongst the trees and not visible until we were almost on it. It was two or three stories – difficult to tell from the front given that it was built on a hillside – and made of undressed cobblestones with a classic tiled roof. Apart from the windows, it could have been lifted directly out of fifteenth century England. I immediately fell in love with it.

Sam parked beside the front door. "Tada!" she said as we climbed out of her car. "It was the closest thing I could find to living in actual ruins."

I walked along the outside of it through the light snow. The original chimney was still on the side of the house, and that meant an open fireplace in the living room. I think I had mentioned in passing that I'd always loved those to Sam… two years ago, perhaps? I could hardly remember it myself.

Sam was practically bursting as I walked back toward her. "Tell me you love it!" she said, and threw her arms around my neck.

I smiled at her, wrapping mine around her waist. "I'm actually rather disturbed by how well you know me," I said, and then kissed her.

She pulled me against the side of the car. I couldn't enjoy it as much as I should have, though, because of our coats.

Sam's gloved hands had been pulling at the tag of my zipper but not actually succeeding in unfastening it. In the end, she gave up. "I want to show you the house anyway," she said, and slipped out from underneath me, jogging over to the door… in stilettos, in the snow. Her toes must just about have been falling off.

I chuckled and followed her inside. It must have been such an old building—all the rooms were tiny. None of them had been altered, either, except the bathroom which had been divided to add a toilet. The movers had down the best they could with my furniture and put it in all the right rooms. Since it was all either from Ikea or something I'd carried home off the side of the road, it looked awfully out of place between the beautiful stone walls and high ceilings. It was a shame to put such junk in such a beautiful old house.

That moment was probably the first time I'd actually considered going to an antique shop for furniture in my life. Mum would have been proud. They had always been dragging me into those when I was a little girl.

"How much is it a month?" I asked Sam as I walked back into the living room.

Something passed over her face. "Three thousand," she said.

I put my hand on her shoulder and made her look at me. "Sam."

She winced and turned away from me again. "Okay, okay, four. But don't you think it's worth it?"

Four thousand pounds was a _lot_ of money to spend per month on rent. On the other hand, this was a very nice house and it did seem to be as private as Sam had promised. I looked up at the beautiful detailed ceilings.

"Come on…" Sam pleaded. "You got all that money from Natla. Can't we just enjoy it?"

The money she was referring to were the three installments of the contract that were only supposed to be paid to me when I handed over the three Scion fragments to Natla. Technically, that had happened. Natla obviously hadn't been around to instruct the payroll department not to, so they'd transferred whole sum in the contract to me. The day after it had gone through my bank had called me to ask me if there'd been some mistake.

The right thing to do would to be to invest it in assets. But investing it would involve speaking to my accountant and he kept trying to sign over the rest of the trust to me.

I _did_ need some nice furniture. Sam would absolutely love shopping for that with me, too. Furniture was an asset, wasn't it?

"I'm not happy about you not sticking to a thousand," I told her, walking out of the door to go and haul some of my boxes inside. I couldn't stay angry with her, though, because the look on her face was absolutely heart-breaking. I put an arm around her and walked her with me. "But this place _is_ perfect, so I forgive you."

She exhaled. "Oh, my God, I was _so_ excited when I found it. I knew you would love it."

"Who's the agent?"

She looked a little panicked. "Uh, I don't remember."

Trust Sam to be so flippant about four thousand pounds, I thought. I opened the boot above my head and lifted one of boxes at the front out of it. "How are we going to pay if you don't remember who we're renting it from?"

She accepted the box from me went to lug it inside. "They're debiting it from my account. You can just transfer me your half once a month."

I took another out for myself. It was snowing in earnest now and the top of the box was getting dusted with snowflakes as I followed her in. "Okay, that's easy enough. I'll set up a transfer before we leave. What time's the flight again?"

"Ten, from Gatwick."

I put the box inside the doorway and looked out. "I hope the weather's better by then." I ran from the doorway under the door of the boot and took another box. "That's some luck for you. I haven't had a holiday since finals and when I finally get around to booking one, we get heavy snow in the south of England in _November_."

We finished carrying all the boxes in and locked the car. I didn't realise exactly how much thought Sam had put into choosing this house until she showed me that all the windows were cleverly divided by a combination of timber and iron bars. You couldn't kick through it in a million years. She'd done that on purpose.

"Hopefully that will help you sleep better," she said, put a hand briefly on my arm before she locked the door and went to take off her coat. I had one of those moments where my heart ached with how much I loved her.

I probably should have been either packing for our holiday or unpacking the boxes, but the first thing I wanted to do after I'd taken off my coat was get a fire going in our new fireplace.

Sam watched me as I set up the hearth and lit it. "You're a little too good at that," she told me as the flames spread across the logs. Dragging one of my beanbags into the warmth, she pulled me onto it with her.

"Roth taught me when we were on expeditions together," I said, squishing in next to her. "Yamatai just gave me a lot of opportunity to practice."

"But can you kill demi-gods with it?" Sam asked, putting an arm behind my head. The gentle crackling of the flames was relaxing.

"Killing demi-gods is your specialty, remember?"

She put her lips to my neck and I flopped my chin sideways so she could get a better angle. She was _so_ good at this. I let my eyes fall closed as I enjoyed the warmth of the fire and the feeling of Sam's mouth on my skin.

"Let's call off our holiday and just stay here by ourselves for a month," I suggested when Sam stopped for a moment.

"No way," she said and then kissed my chin. "You're going to love Australia, and since Jonah's in New Zealand visiting his family it's kind of stupid not to take advantage of that." I pressed my mouth against hers and she smiled against my lips. "On second thoughts…"

I could feel her fingers unbuckling my jeans and for just a few moments I relaxed back into the beanbag. That was until her icy cold hand actually touched my bare stomach. I shrieked and pushed it away. "God, Sam!" I said, edging away from her. "Your hands are _freezing!_ "

She tried to prevent me from escaping. "I don't suppose you have anywhere warm I could put them, do you?"

"Oh, my God!" I laughed at her and rolled off the beanbag, edging away.

She just lay in it and laughed. "I'm kind of hungry anyway," she said. "Let's go find some food, then we'd better pack."

I went to get my wallet while Sam hunted around in the debris for the car keys. She'd put them down somewhere earlier and had subsequently lost them. While she was looking for them she'd found her phone, though, because she glaring at it when I joined her in the entryway to put my shoes back on. Her jaw was set at an angle.

"What is it?"

She shook her head tightly and then stuffed her phone in the pocket of her coat. "Mom's just texting me again." Her phone didn't fit, though, because her car keys were in there. She took them out.

"What did she say?"

Sam shook her head again, waving her hand dismissively. "The usual crap. Dad gave her my number, probably to get rid of her."

I winced. I didn't blame her for speaking the way she sometimes did about her parents, but it was still jarring. My mum wouldn't be texting me anytime soon. "Want to get take-away?" I asked her, changing the subject as I knelt to zip up my boots.

She looked grateful. "There's actually a little Thai restaurant in the town near here," she said as she lifted her gloves off the lean-to. "No supermarket, though."

I unbolted the door and let her out of it, slinging my coat on. "I have a feeling we're going to be eating a _lot_ of Thai when we get back." I looked back for a moment at the fire. "You think it's safe to leave it?"

"Yeah, we're totally risking coming back to a warm house," Sam said, taking my hand and pulling me out of the door. "Come on, let's go. All this heavy lifting has made me starving."


	2. Chapter 2

If we'd had Sam's way, we've have ended up at Gatwick with about five minutes to check-in our luggage, pass through security and clear passport control. Then we'd have sprinted down through the gates while our names were called over the loud speaker and _Final Call_ flashed on the departure information screens.

Fortunately we had _my_ way, which meant that after we'd made it through to the gates we had two full hours to relax and look forward to our holiday.

"I could have slept two extra hours," Sam complained as she sat down opposite me and hunched over her coffee as if it was a small furnace. "I love sleeping in when it's snowing."

The bedroom could have doubled as a fridge, so we'd taken our pillows and the duvet downstairs and slept in front of the fire. I hadn't done that since I was ten years old. It _had_ been a shame to get up in the morning, but it was going to be much warmer where we were headed so I figured it would be worth the sacrifice.

While we were seated across from each other in the departure lounge, I looked furtively around us. We were in one of those rare moments where no one had any idea who we were. Everyone was too bleary-eyed from hauling themselves out of bed at the break of dawn so as not to miss their flights. I smiled faintly. It was nice to feel invisible again.

Sam finished her coffee and stood up with purpose. When I looked quizzically at her, she said, "Duty free!" and fished her purse out of her carryon.

As she strode off in the direction of the shops, I chuckled to myself. Taking my phone out of my pocket, I texted, " _That's fine, I'm happy to mind your bag for you and no, you can't get me anything but I appreciate you asking._ "

My pocket buzzed while I was searching through my backpack for the iPad. After I'd found it and sat back with it balanced on my knees, I glanced at my phone again. Sam had replied with a photo. I opened it and zoomed in; it was of a fifties-style polka-dot bikini and it was too big for Sam.

I made a noise and texted back. " _No._ "

After a second she replied, " _Too late. Hope they don't accept returns. ;)"_

I sighed and unlocked the iPad.

I'd changed my personal email after the fiasco with all the journalists, but I had to confess it was a little depressing having no unread messages. It reminded me that I wasn't in the middle of any projects and, actually, I had nothing to do. Without Yamatai to obsess over, I felt oddly useless. I wasn't working and I wasn't studying. I was in a limbo where I had time to go on indefinite holidays and I didn't have anything really to worry about. I should be happy about having all this free time, shouldn't I?

Since I had the iPad open, I logged on to Cambridge's online library. After meeting Professor Chamberlain on Natla's team in Peru, he had been kind enough to grant me access to it despite the fact I wasn't a student. As much as I hated charity, I had to concede it was _far_ superior to the one on UCL's database. I downloaded a few volumes about the history of and ancient cultures in Australia, figuring I'd read them on the plane.

In the meantime, there was that email from Prof. Chamberlain that I'd been procrastinating about replying to that I really _should_ do something about. I went back to my inbox and opened it. He was just so wordy in all his emails to me, I felt as if there would be an exam at the end of them.

" _Good to speak to you again, Lara,"_ it began, " _As I mentioned on the phone, we have some great opportunities in the department that I would really like to offer to you before we advertise. If you click the link in my signature and follow it through to 'open tenders' you'll find all the project details. I encourage you to look at them because there's only a couple of other archaeologists who I think would be suited to this sort of work and they are already working on large projects."_ I followed his advice and downloaded the four tender documents. I didn't feel like reading them now, though. I'd worry about that after we got back from holidays. I tabbed back to the email. _"I did watch that movie you were in, and I must say it's absolutely fascinating. I'd like to have a discussion with you at some point about where you drew inspiration from for some of the details. Particularly this 'Natla'– genius using that CEO as the character, by the way – were you following the Aryan-Norse connection to Atlantis by Blavatsky?_ " He went on and on about his theories about Blavatsky, actually giving some weight to them. I skimmed over it, not having much interest in spending too much of my time thinking about Natla and everything that had happened as a result of her. I still dreamt about Larson.

Towards the end of the email was a comment I thought was rather interesting. " _I've been arguing with the fellows here that research papers are such an out-dated way of presenting historical theories. No one is interested in reading twenty thousand words of research anymore; the world has moved on and so has technology. It occurred to me while I was re-watching Tomb Raider that you have pioneered the best possible package to deliver archaeological theories to the public. You're entertaining them and as a result they are learning about ancient civilizations. Of course, many people disagree with the view you have presented. I'm sure if I argued it was literal I'd be laughed off the lectern. The fact of the matter is that is the new frontier of reporting research. You are treading new ground. Your father would have been so proud of you._ "

I sat back and digested that idea, feeling a smile grow across my face. It was a huge compliment so naturally I wanted to believe it was true. Was it, though? Had Sam and I accidentally stumbled onto cutting-edge methodology? I hadn't really been focusing on the academic aspect of any of the places we'd visited in the footage, but Sam had made sure to cut in some video of me with the artefacts. I had recorded audio explaining the basic features of the art and statues we'd filmed, too. I supposed there had been _some_ educational value in the final product, but I wasn't sure I'd go so far as to say it was the new media version of a research paper on Atlantean mythology. It was mostly just a narrative in several historical settings.

I wasn't removed enough from it to be able to analyse it in any useful way, either. It was times like this that I really wish I _did_ have my father to discuss this stuff with.

I had been completely stuck on that thought when Sam returned, bags in tow.

I snapped out of my internal monologue as she dropped one of them in my lap. I opened it, expecting the scandalous polka-dot bikini that she implied she'd bought for me, but inside there was a taupe two-piece. I lifted the parts of it out to examine them; the briefs were reasonably modest and the top was a full-length tank that would cover my stomach and the twisted scar on it. I looked up at her and she winked, but she didn't say anything about her ruse. I wanted to throw my arms around her.

"You had that look again," she told me as she sat down and lined the bags up at her feet. For a moment I thought she meant the look I must have given her when I was thinking about hugging her. "You know," she continued as she put her purse back into her backpack. "The look you used to get when you were thinking about Yamatai. You'd just stare off like that and then suddenly you'd say something random like, 'What if Aoki was wrong about the time-dating on that artefact?', or something else I had no idea about." I hadn't noticed I'd done that.

Sam showed me various accessories she's bought, leaving a small black bag until last. "And," she said, ceremoniously lifting a handful of fabric out of it, "something else for you."

Before I realised exactly what she was doing, she'd draped a lacy negligee across her chest. I supposed it was nice, but I'd never cared much about lingerie. What I did care about, though, was that she'd whipped it out in public and was grinning mischievously at me in a crowded departure lounge.

I happened to glance beside us and made eye contact with a middle-aged man who looked just as uncomfortable about Sam's negligee as I was.

I blushed furiously. "Sam," I hissed, "put that away!"

She didn't. "What you don't like it? Maybe if you had a better idea of how it would look…" She pretended to be about to take her jacket off.

The middle-aged man cleared his throat and his wife _glared_ at me. They probably couldn't hear her and I didn't think they knew who we were, but it was still horribly embarrassing. I put a hand over my eyes. "Sam…!"

"Okay, okay," she said, scrunching it up and tucking it back into the bag. "We're going to have a lot of fun down under, though," she said, sounding pleased with herself.

Oh, God. I didn't know if I was more angry at her for the teasing or for her awful double-entendre. "I don't know whether to love you or hate you sometimes," I told her. "I'm beginning to think you picked Australia specifically so you can tell people that we went south together and it was really hot."

Something occurred to her. "Two seconds," she said cryptically and then slowly pulled an item out of her bag. It was unmistakable: her camera. She switched it on and unfolded the LCD. "Care to repeat that?"

I leaned across and snatched the camera off her, holding it right up in front of my face. "We haven't even left England yet and already I want to kill Sam."

She laughed and accepted it back from me, aiming it at herself. "She's lying," she said. "And check out the blush, by the way." She turned the camera back toward me. Drawing attention to my red cheeks only made them even darker.

I couldn't help but notice that our antics, especially with the camera, had caught the attention of other people waiting in our departure lounge. I saw whispering and then a girl tugged on her mother's arm and pointed excitedly at me.

I winced. Goodbye, invisibility. I just couldn't have any sort of fun in public without people eventually figuring out who I was. I wondered what the magazines would say, this time.

Sam noticed and turned to look where I had been. It was a really obvious movement and all the people who _had_ been watching us suddenly pretended to be very busy doing other things. She looked back at me and held the camera up. "The paranoia's starting again," she said, mock-seriously. "Everyone is watching you. Watching, and judging."

This, I didn't really want to joke about. "It's not paranoia, Sam."

She looked at least slightly guilty. "Okay." She closed the LCD and put the camera on her lap. "You want to go hide in the member lounge or something? Those places are usually pretty deserted."

As much as I hated to be one of those famous people who couldn't even sit with everyone else, it turned out to be a great idea. Sam smooth-talked her way inside without us having to pay a cent and we spent at least an hour in the complimentary massage chairs until our backs and legs were numb.

While the chair's leg extension was squeezing the life out of my calves, Sam had given me a copy of our itinerary to look over. I'd always likened Sam's planning of our holidays to the way she'd edit videos; we'd brainstorm a list of places we wanted to go and then Sam would spend a week or two figuring out how to string everything seamlessly together so it worked. It had been more difficult with Australia, though, because aside from Uluru I didn't automatically know of any historic places I wanted to see. I'd ended up spending half a day on Cambridge's online database quickly putting together a list of archeologically significant places for us to visit.

True, I _had_ taken a history unit that contained several classes on Australia, but it was nearly four years ago and I could hardly remember any of it. I'd always been more interested in Asian rather than Australasian history, and I'd never managed to drag myself through all the optional reading that our lecturer had assigned.

That memory reminded me of what Prof Chamberlain had said about long-winded papers being outdated. I wondered what Sam would think of his theory.

"Can I show you something?" I asked Sam while she fiddled with the settings on her chair.

"You haven't even told me what you think of the itinerary," she said. "But sure."

I took the iPad out and opened Prof Chamberlain's email. I scrolled down to the part where he'd theorised that _Tomb Raider_ was the way forward for presenting research.

I could see her read it a few times. She thought about it before she spoke. "I knew it would make archaeology interesting to the general public," she said eventually. "But I never thought of it actually affecting other archaeologists. I'm kind of biased on this one, but I think he's right. The way to make this material accessible is to present it in a way that entertains the audience. It's not to compete with your peers over who can use the longest sentences with the longest words in some obscure periodical," she said, and then added, "no offense."

Despite the fact I'd written some of those wordy articles, I wasn't upset by her assessment of them. "I knew you'd do something good with the footage, but I didn't think you would end up potentially changing the face of my industry." I looked up at her from the iPad. There was such a keen mind hiding under that perfectly shaped haircut, I thought. She was just brilliant, brilliant _and_ beautiful. If only people knew.

She noticed my expression and waited for me to explain it.

"You're _not_ just a pretty face," I said to her, mirroring something she said occasionally herself.

She snorted, locking the iPad and handing it back to me. "I love how you say that like it's totally new information."

I put it in my bag. "You know that's not how I meant it."

"Yeah," she said, giving me that coy little smile of hers. "I know."

She reached out and put her hand over mine. Her eyes were darting from mine to my lips. I glanced over my shoulder; there was a suited professional sitting on the other side of the lounge with his laptop out. He looked engrossed in it, but I didn't really want to take any chances. I shook my head. "Not here."

She sat back her in chair and drew a slow breath.

Why did I feel guilty about making that request? "I'm sorry, Sam, I just don't feel comfortable."

She nodded. "I know, you don't have to apologise," she said, looking away from me. For a moment it seemed like she was going to say something else, but she changed her mind. Instead, she took her phone out and checked the screen. "We have to board in like ten minutes anyway."

Sam was quiet and uncharacteristically well behaved as we boarded. I'd insisted that we _not_ fly first class which was always Sam's preference, but luckily we had no one seated in the aisle seat next to us in economy, anyway.

Once we'd settled in and taken off, I took out the iPad to start reading the papers on Australian archaeology that I'd downloaded. I'd actually almost finished one of them before Sam managed to decide what she wanted to watch on the in-flight entertainment system.

She showed me. I leaned over to the screen and read, " _Steve Irwin: Crocodile Hunter_ ," I gave her a look. "Old times' sake?" She used to play it loudly on our shared telly when I was trying to study at boarding school.

She pressed play. "You bet." She thought for a moment. "I want to get some footage of you wrestling a crocodile at some point."

I remembered the crocodile in St. Francis' Folly and Egypt and didn't relish the thought.

I'd made my way through two or three more papers about various sites in Australia when Sam got sick of watching without me. When she didn't have anyone to discuss direction and cinematography with, I'd discovered she had quite a short attention span.

She leaned on my shoulder. I re-read the sentence I was trying to understand. The more I laboured through these dissertations the more I decided Prof Chamberlain had a point about needing to reconsider how information was presented.

"What are you reading?" Sam asked me, looking at the screen. "… _'t_ _he Wanjina-Wunggurr people of the northwest Kimberley which includes the language countries of the Worrorra, Ngarinyin, Unggumi, Umida, Unggar—_ '" she tried to pronounce it again, "' _Unggarrangul_ '… Oh, whatever. Did I come close?"

"I have _no_ idea."

She laughed. "It's so weird to hear you say that. I'm so used to you reading history articles and correcting the information in them. What's it about?"

That was a good question. I tried to think about what I'd just read. "It's just discussing the differences in creation stories between all the different Aboriginal peoples in part of Australia." I paused. "Using as many words as possible."

"Can you give me the abridged version?"

While I was trying to think of where to start, Sam continued to read over my shoulder. "' _The Dreaming_ '?" she read, "Okay, that's one story I could totally get invested in."

"That's just what they call their version of Genesis," I said, and then I frowned. I wasn't sure that was right, exactly. I had a feeling it was more complex than that. I scrolled back up to try and find where I'd read about it. "I'm sure there was something here about it being non-linear. Like… an ongoing and continuous process that people are still part of today."

Sam was watching me with the same appraising expression she had when she was watching documentaries. I stopped scrolling to look at her. "I have an idea," she said, and then stopped.

Well, that was clearly a prompt for me to ask her about it. "You do?"

She looked sheepish. "I know this is our holiday and we're not supposed to be working. But listening to you sorting through this historical stuff is _way_ more interesting than what I was reading earlier."

I waited for her to get to the point.

"You don't know too much about this, yeah?" I shook my head. "So, what if we do a kind of educational reality-TV-type documentary? You can explain what you're finding out and seeing to us as we visit these places," I assumed by 'us' she meant the audience, "and we can learn along with you."

"I don't think it's going to have the same appeal as _Lara Croft: Tomb Raider_ ," I said. "There's not much mortal danger in looking at cave paintings."

Sam shrugged. "Let me worry about how to make it appealing," she said. "Besides, there's plenty of mortal danger in Australia. Come on, Steve Irwin was a professional and he still got killed on the job." I must have looked unconvinced, because she asked gingerly, "Would you prefer we just had a nice holiday, though?" She looked terrified I might tell her I would actually rather just that.

I always had trouble saying no to Sam when she was really excited about something. To be honest, I didn't even want to turn her down this time because I liked her idea. I kept thinking about what Prof Chamberlain was saying about new frontiers and I wanted to find out if I could convince myself he was right. Sam's suggestion seemed more like prime-time telly fodder than anything else, though. Then again, who was to say that entertainment-style shows couldn't have sophisticated themes? I wouldn't put it past Sam to be able to subtly present ideas if I asked her to.

Sam was about to explode by the time I finally answered her. "Let's do it," I said with resolve.

She threw her arms around my neck, nearly accidentally choking me. She apologised as she retrieved her camera out of the bag at her feet and pointed it at me. "Let's start now," she said. "Tell me the most interesting thing written in that paper in front of you."

"The most interesting?" I asked her, and she nodded. I tabbed through it. "Well, all Aboriginal peoples agree that the Rainbow Serpent – an enormous mythological deity – created most of the features of the landscape by slithering across the earth."

Sam snorted. "Okay, I'm going to say it. _Rainbow_ serpent? I think I saw a float like that at the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras once."

I grinned. "It gets better," I said. "It's sometimes portrayed as a female and bisexual."

"Oh, my God," Sam said, looking up over the LCD. "This is _way_ more interesting than reading the paper. What else have you got there?"

I went through some of the other themes. Most of them were comparable to many of the other ancient cultures I'd come across, and all of them eventually came back to children, sex and death.

"Well, nothing has changed," Sam noted. When I asked her about it, she said. "People are _still_ obsessed with that stuff. That's what gets viewers: porn, violence and cartoons." I laughed at her synthesis as she continued. "I'm not even going to have to try and find ways to make people watch this. Did you say there's a whole cave full of drawings of female genitalia?" I nodded. "Gold. This is going to be awesome. I totally love these guys already." She stretched. "Let's take a break, though. There's some other stuff on here I wanted to watch." She switched on the in-flight entertainment system and put her camera away.

We had settled back to watch a documentary on Australia's deadliest snakes, when Sam lifted her head off my shoulder and asked casually, "You want to join the mile high club?"

I gave her a _look._

She sighed and rested her head again. "Oh, whatever. It was worth a shot." Unlike in the lounge, however, she was smiling.


	3. Chapter 3

"Ladies and Gentleman, Qantas airlines would like welcome you to Sydney, Australia. The local time is seven thirty-five am and the current temperature is a crisp fourteen degrees Celsius. Today's forecast is a clear and sunny twenty-five, and no," the PA said in an Australian accent, "it's not snowing here. For those of you with connecting flights across our stupidly huge country, we wish you a safe onward journey. For those of you leaving us here we hope you enjoy your stay."

It was such a shock to hear a formal announcement that didn't take itself seriously that both Sam and I were giggling about it.

"I can't believe I didn't record that," Sam lamented as we stuffed all our belongings back into our carryon so we could alight. "That's hilarious!"

"Standard script," the air hostess said when Sam asked her about it as we were leaving the plane.

I thought she might have been joking, but Sam pulled a business card out of her pocket and gave it to the woman. "Next time you say it could you record it with your cell or something and email me the sound file?"

The woman looked down at the card, but I couldn't see any recognition on her face when she read Sam's name. "Next time my boss isn't looking I'll see what I can get away with," she said, smiling far too professionally for what she was saying.

She doesn't know who we are, I thought. This trip might turn out better than I expected!

We were leaving the plane by the rear stairs. The first thing I noticed was that despite the fact that it was allegedly a 'crisp' fourteen degrees, the sun was already over the horizon and warm against my skin. I wondered if Australia was going to be just as awfully hot during the day as parts of Africa had been.

"Sun!" Sam said, squinting toward it. "I forget what it feels like when I'm in England."

"Keep going," I told her, smiling and giving her a gentle shove in the back. "We're blocking the stairs."

Our hotel was in The Rocks, which was about a twenty-minute taxi ride from the airport. Sam had her camera out during the trip and it made the driver nervous, especially since she was asking him questions the whole time. His English wasn't fantastic and I think he thought we were trying to catch him doing the wrong thing. When we reached the Park Hyatt, he couldn't get our suitcases out of the boot fast enough and drive off.

"I didn't pay him," Sam said as we watched him take off up the road. "Do you think he recognised us?"

I shrugged. I supposed if he did it explained why he was so uncomfortable about the video.

The concierge did, though. "Ms. Croft, Ms. Nishimura," a voice from behind us startled me. I fought the urge to roll behind a pillar as adrenaline coursed through me, managing to simply smile at him as he continued. "Leave your bags with us. There's no need to check in, we have your room already prepared for you."

I would have been perfectly happy to lug everything into the lifts myself, but there were several people in sharp uniforms buzzing around us and I'm quite sure they wouldn't have taken no for an answer. So, we went upstairs without our bags.

The features of our room were fairly standard, but what made it _spectacular_ was the perfect view of the Sydney Opera House out the main window. There wasn't a single cloud in the sky around it, either. I walked up to the glass. Not two days earlier I'd been staring outside of our new home into grey-half light and heavy snowfall. This was surreal.

"That's a beautiful frame," Sam said.

I looked back toward her, and she was standing in the door of the bathroom with her camera pointed at me.

"This view…" I said, shaking my head and admiring it.

"Oh, yeah," she said, with the camera pointed directly at me and not at the window. "Gorgeous."

I rolled my eyes, but I was smiling. She panned around the room as she walked out into it. I could see that half-grin poking out from behind the LCD. "This hotel is great," she said. "Spa, double-shower, kitchenette… but the bed." She pointed the lens at the king-sized bed. "The bed is missing something. What could that be?"

I groaned aloud and strode over to her. She had the camera pointed at me as I went toe-to-toe with her and pushed her backwards onto the duvet. She let herself fall onto her back and the camera bounced somewhere off the mattress. I worried about where it had gone for a total of about three seconds before climbing on top of her.

"Better now?" I asked her as I pinned her hands above her head. In the process of catching her hands, I'd pulled one side of her t-shirt up over her bra and through the transparent lace I could see the curves of one of her breasts. _That_ got me going.

"I'm wearing _way_ too many clothes for this moment," Sam giggled and then curled a leg behind my knee and I fell on her.

I was busy kissing her deeply and helping her solve the too many clothes problem when there was a knock on the door.

We both stopped and looked at it for a second just to double-check it was definitely for us. It sounded again. I went to crawl off Sam and she grabbed me and pulled me back. "Oh, my God, just ignore it," she said and kissed me a few times. "It's been like a whole week, you're killing me."

A pleasant voice called from the door, "Your luggage, ladies!"

I looked down at Sam. She shook her head sternly. "Lara. Seriously, just let them leave it out there."

That was silly; this would only take a second. I made a face and stepped down off the bed, stopping for a moment to refasten and adjust my bra before I jogged over toward the entrance.

Sam put her hands over her face and made a really odd noise in the back of her throat. "I swear to God, the universe _hates_ me."

By the time I answered the door she at least had her t-shirt back on, if not her bra. She'd left it beside her on the bed for whoever it was to see.

The man who was at the door with our luggage wasn't dressed like the porters. In fact, he was wearing a sharp suit and his name tag read _Duty Manager_. "Good morning, Ms. Croft," he said, lifting our two enormous suitcases as if they weighed nothing and carrying them into the room. "Would you like me to put these directly in the robe for you?"

I stepped aside to let him pass by me. "Please."

Sam had at least had the decency to sit up on the bed so it wasn't _too_ obvious what we'd been up to. Without her bra, though, her nipples pushed against her t-shirt and I wasn't sure if that gave us away.

If it wasn't possible to guess, though, Sam put all speculation on the matter to rest. "Sorry about how long it took us to answer the door, we were kind of in the middle of something."

I shot her a sharp look and she ignored it.

The manager didn't look fazed in the slightest. "I'll just be a moment and then I'll let you get back to it," he said with complete professionalism. However, he added, "I will just remind you that you're booked on the late morning Sydney Harbour Bridge Climb and your taxi leaves in," he checked his watch, "twenty minutes from outside the lobby."

Now that sounded interesting, I thought. I remembered hearing something about Oprah having done that; perhaps that's where Sam took the idea from.

Sam wasn't quite as enthusiastic as I was. She flopped back in the bed and put her hands back over her head. "I totally hate myself," she announced. "Twenty minutes? What was I thinking?"

I looked apologetically at the manager and he smiled at me. "If there's anything we can do to make your stay more comfortable, please let us know. Here's my personal mobile number," he handed his business card to me and let himself out.

After he left I could easily have hopped straight back on the bed with Sam, but we didn't really have time to do anything now. Besides, we had a whole month to do this stuff and only twenty minutes to shower.

As I walked along the bed, Sam caught me and nearly managed to pull me on top of her again. She took one of my hands and put it between her thighs. "Lara…" she said, giving my name about five syllables. "I'll be really quick, I promise."

"Sam!" I laughed, managing to free myself and my kidnapped hand. "You're never that fast and we both have to have showers." When I saw a mischievous glint in her eye at that, I added, "By ourselves, or we'll never get out the door. Come on, we can get back to this later."

"Later?" she sounded like I was asking her to sacrifice her firstborn, but she did at least stand up. "Fine, whatever. At least let me go first so I can have a cold one."

"I thought you said cold showers didn't work?"

She sighed as she unzipped her suitcase so she could dig out her toiletries bag. "They don't, but it will feel really bad and that will help me sulk properly."

I had to laugh at that, even with the mock-glare Sam shot at me before she locked herself in the bathroom.

As much as Sam would have preferred we'd stayed in the hotel and shagged all morning, the bridge climb turned out to be a fantastic idea. There was a group of about twelve tourists including Sam and I, and we all met together at an office near the base of the bridge so we could get the safety briefing.

Most of the other tourists with us were couples and one of them was a lesbian couple. As we were getting ready, one of the women recognised us immediately and double-took. She elbowed her girlfriend who looked incredibly bored as she whispered something frantically into her ear. The bored girlfriend saw me looking and called to me, "Ignore Bree, she hasn't taken her pills today."

I liked her immediately.

'Bree', presumably, came over to us anyway. She looked younger than us, maybe in her late teens. She stopped closely in front of me and said with complete conviction, "I am so in love with you." Without any shade of hesitation, she threw her arms around my middle.

I froze. What do you even _do_ with that?

The other girl rushed up to peel her off me. "I am _so_ sorry," she told me, and it occurred to me that she might be quite a lot older than her girlfriend. Her hair was cropped short and she was wearing a men's hoodie. She was also about as tall as her girlfriend was short. If she hadn't spoken I may not have been a hundred per cent certain if she was a woman and not a lanky teenage boy. "I should have brought her muzzle. We'll leave you alone, I promise."

Once I'd recovered from the shock, I shook my head dismissively. I had no idea what to make of what just happened and when I turned to look at Sam, Sam had the bloody camera out and had filmed the whole thing. She waved cheerfully at me. "Don't mind me!" she said. "Keep rolling!"

Bree had managed to bat her girlfriend off and she held her mobile at me. I thought for a second she might ask for my phone number, but instead she said, "It's a memo app. Can you write me something?"

Autographs were something I could cope with, so I accepted her phone and scribbled something on it with a fingertip. "Bree, wasn't it?" I asked and she nodded enthusiastically.

When I gave her phone back to her, she held it like it was a piece of art. "Can you guess what the best part of this is?" she asked me. I shook my head. "You know who I am!"

I was feeling already extremely uncomfortable, but that didn't hold a candle to how her girlfriend must have been feeling. The other girl looked _horribly_ embarrassed. I felt for her; Sam also couldn't be always be trusted to behave sensibly, either.

Rather than have an actual conversation with me, Bree said, "Hang on a second, I just have to upload this," and focused completely on her phone as she stood directly in front of me.

I stared at the top of her head, wondering what the protocol was in this sort of situation. Over her shoulder I could see a door leading somewhere on the other side of the office. I fantasised about making some excuse and stepping around her to disappear through it.

While she was busy on her phone, the guide introduced himself to everyone and asked us to all say our names and something about ourselves. I resisted the urge to give myself a fake name and some ridiculous hobby. Instead, I just stuck to the boring truth: "I'm Lara, I'm an archaeologist."

A few faces pinged as I spoke. Fortunately, though, no one else ran up and threw their arms around me.

The other girl's name was Min and despite the Korean name she had a broad Australian accent. They were both university students, but the older girl was doing her masters in Fine Arts.

We all had to be tethered together with safety ropes for the climb up, and Bree couldn't have looked happier to chain herself to me. From Sam's expression, I could tell she thought the whole thing was hilarious. She was certainly filming it as much as she could.

As a result of being chained between Bree and Sam, I gave up hope that the bridge climb would be anything other than extremely awkward.

Thankfully, though, it wasn't really. We had to spend a good hour climbing all the stairs, and the other two girls weren't very fit. That meant that they weren't really able to talk much while they were climbing. In front of me, Sam was having the same bother as they were. She stopped halfway up a really narrow mesh staircase. "I don't suppose you want to carry me again, do you?" she asked, breathless.

I grinned and pushed her forward. "Not a chance," I said, feeling energised by the exertion. "It's your turn to be uncomfortable."

When we finally reached it, the view from the top was simply breath-taking. Through the metal grate underneath us, we could see traffic passing a hundred metres below. The city itself was framed by the beautiful clear blue sky and a sparkling harbour. Unlike London, there was no smog cloaking the horizon.

Sam took plenty of footage of it. "This is my new favourite city," she told me. Since she said that about every city we visited, I couldn't really take her seriously.

Beside us, Min and Bree had turned with their back to the skyscrapers. Bree held her phone out, and said, "No tongue this time, though, that looks weird." They kissed. I turned away from them and could hear the shutter sound of Bree taking a few shots of them kissing with Sydney in the background.

Sam had seen them, too, and looked at me hopefully. I shook my head.

We took a few completely platonic selfies of the both of us, anyway. When we were done the other two were still at it, leaning on the barricade and kissing with gusto. I couldn't actually get very far away from them, either, because the rope between us was only about a metre long. So I had to stand there while they were ravishing each other, listening to the sound of it.

Sam watched them wistfully and murmured in my ear. "We could probably get away with it up here, you know."

I glanced at the other tourists who looked equally as uncomfortable about the kissing girls as I was. I didn't want to be the cause of anyone feeling like I was feeling, and I certainly didn't want to risk having my photo taken in the same position as the girls beside me were in. I shook my head at her.

She turned away from me. "Okay."

The descent was faster because people needed fewer rest breaks. Once we were back in the office and unclipping ourselves from each other, I had to admit that my thighs _were_ a little shaky. That made me worry about my preparedness should anything happen. I should buy some exercise equipment with Natla's money, I thought, or over winter I'll lose it all. If I lose it all, what happens if I find myself in a situation like Yamatai again?

Sam put a gentle hand on my arm. I hadn't been aware I was just standing in the middle of the office and staring into space until she'd roused me from my thoughts. I smiled appreciatively at her and put my hand over hers for a second before taking off the rest of the safety gear.

Min walked up to us, hunched as if she had her tail between her legs and a long-suffering expression on her face. "Sorry to bother you two again," she said, and actually sounded like she meant it. "But Bree will never stop trying to kill me if I don't invite you two to have lunch with us." Over where they had been standing, Bree smiled brightly at us.

Sam and I looked at each other. I wasn't particularly keen on the idea, but I didn't really feel like it would be polite to refuse so I shrugged. Sam looked pleased.

"Sure, but I'm bringing this," she held up the camera, "if that's cool."

Min snorted. "Bree already has a YouTube channel and my parents don't really watch TV."

The place they took us was a tiny Chinese restaurant buried in a laneway off one of the main streets. It turned out to be a top location because it was tiny and we were the only patrons, which meant we got to sit in one of the two booths.

Bree had hardly said anything for the whole walk, instead preferring to listen to Min, Sam and I making polite conversation. However, as soon as we sat down and the waiter took our orders out the back to the kitchen, she suddenly burst out with, "Please tell me you two are a couple!"

It wasn't possible for my eyebrows to be any further into my hairline than they were at that moment. Sam looked between Bree and I and startled giggling.

"We're a couple," I told her very slowly.

"You just saying that because I told you to!"

Sam _lost_ it.

I looked across at Min, who had her eyes cast upwards at the ceiling. "Please, God," she said aloud. "Just kill me now and put me out of my misery."

That actually made me smile. I looked back at Bree who was dead serious and actually looking a little offended by both Sam's laughter and Min's embarrassment. "We are actually a couple," I confirmed.

She looked relieved, and then excited. "I knew it," she said, and then turned to Min. "See, I told you!"

Min sighed and looked helplessly at me. "I don't know this person," she said, gesturing at Bree. "I've never seen her before in my life."

Bree ignored her. "Oh, my God. I have to tell everyone!" She leaned sideways to take her phone out of hip pocket.

I held my hands up. "No—!" She stopped what she was doing and looked up at me, surprised. "Please, don't blog it or tweet it or whatever it is you plan to do."

She put her phone down on the table in front of her. "Oh, you're not out?"

I made a face. I didn't know how to explain it.

"Bree, just leave it," Min told her and to my relief plucked Bree's phone off the table and put it in her own pocket. "Some people don't like to tell the world exactly what they're doing every second of every day."

Bree looked like she might attempt to get her phone back, but then she just leaned relaxed against the padded booth. "Yeah, yeah," she said. "I get it."

Sam managed to pull herself together, wiping tears from her eyes. She took a deep breath. "So, you guys are Aussies?" I would have thought that was fairly obvious from their accents, but I figured Sam was just being polite. "Where are you from?"

"From here," Bree said. "But we just thought it would be kind of fun to do something different than the movies for once. There's nothing on at the moment, anyway."

Min chimed in. "You two are from England, yeah?"

I nodded, but Sam winced. She always had a lot of bother explaining exactly where she was from. "We live there," she said. "Actually we just moved into a new house."

That, Min was interested in. "Yeah? That's awesome. I want to buy something here, but Sydney is too fucking expensive for anyone who doesn't work for one of the huge mining corps. What's it like?"

Sam's eyes lit up. "It's an estate in Surrey. It's not one of those manors there, just a cute little five-hundred year old stone house. It's been so well maintained."

Min's eyes glazed over. "Oh, that's right," she said. "You guys are rich." I _hated_ that assessment, but I didn't say anything as she continued. "Turns out they won't trade digital art for houses, so I'm not sure what I'd use to buy one."

"Well, don't feel too hard-done by," I reassured her. "We're just renting it."

Sam looked at me for a moment. "Right," she said, and then looked crestfallen.

While our lunch was being cooked, Sam and Min chatted away about houses and real estate. I had almost no interest in the topic and was content to let them go on about it while I relaxed.

I watched Min and Bree as they were talking; Bree had snaked an arm behind Min and was resting against her. Min was deep in conversation and hardly noticed but had absently put a hand on Bree's thigh. They looked so happy, I thought, even though they were so different. Not that I felt as if I needed confirmation that it was possible for two such people to be happy, but it was comforting.

Looking at Sam, I watched her leaning forward with her elbows on the table as she animatedly discussed some of her plans to furnish our house. She was so beautiful, I thought, sighing indulgently. She'd probably make our house beautiful, too. She had such as great eye for that sort of thing.

Eventually the camera came out, and as soon as it was pointed at them Bree made some proclamation of love for Min and pulled her in to a full kiss.

Sam looked up over the camera with surprise, and then at me. She was grinning, and for a moment her eyes were on my lips. I wished she'd stop doing that, she _knew_ she wasn't going to get anything in public and it made me feel bad to keep having to turn her down.

I looked away so she wasn't tempted to try anything.

We ended up spending the full day with the other couple. Since Sam and I ordinarily just made friends with other tourists on our travels, it was great to have this time chosen a pair of locals who were able to show us all their favourite parts of Sydney. When the sun went down, Sam had so many shopping bags that she'd begged me to take some of them.

"Carry your own cross," I told her and put my hands in my pockets. My willpower was no match for her puppy eyes, though, so I ended up with at least half of them.

"Are you guys going out tonight?" Bree asked us as the train pulled up to the stop near our hotel.

"Oh, my God, _so_ totally yes," Sam said before I had a chance to answer. I had actually thought her plan would be to stay in and catch up on our missed opportunity earlier in the day. "Where's good in Sydney?"

"Oxford Street," Bree said. "Q Bar has a girls' night tonight. Starts in an hour. Will we see you there?"

"Yes!" Sam answered immediately. Clearly I wasn't going to get a say in this – not that I normally did when it came to clubbing with Sam.

Well, since I was going to spend a good chunk of our holiday dragging her through difficult terrain to various historically significant sites, I couldn't begrudge her a night on the town.

We waved goodbye to them as we stepped off the train and headed back to our hotel.

It was a beautiful night: warm and clear. I was only wearing a t-shirt and was perhaps even a little hot. Nights like this were so rare in England that I decided it was a good idea to go out in this weather. We shouldn't waste it.

"Your face when Bree hugged you," Sam said to me on the way back. "I am _so_ glad I had the camera out. You want to see?"

I put a hand up. "No thanks, I could do without being reminded of that." I changed the hand Sam's bags were in. "They were nice, though. It was good luck to run into them. I just hope Bree manages not to mention any details about us when she almost certainly goes straight to Facebook to tell everyone who she just spent the day with."

Sam shrugged. "No one will believe her. She didn't get any photos of you two together and anyone could forge that note thing on her phone."

That was sad, almost. "You're probably right."

Back at the hotel we didn't have long to get ready. It hardly mattered, though, because I'd only brought one nice top. Sam had brought half her wardrobe as usual and spent almost the whole time agonising over whether she should wear red or black. In the end she went with red and put on some bright lipstick to go with it. There weren't many women who could get away with wearing that colour, but she looked fantastic. She even had heels to go with it.

She went to kiss me and then stopped herself at the last minute. "Whoops! Lipstick."

"I should make you wear it more often," I said to her, and kissed down her neck, instead.

When I was done, she stepped away and held me at arm's length, looking me up and down. "Take your boots off," she said sternly. "Put on those ballet flats I made you bring."

I made a face. "Does it really matter?" I asked, but followed her advice anyway. The flats did look better with jeans, but I wasn't as comfortable in them and I couldn't escape the feeling that I should always be ready in case something bad happened. I wouldn't be able to run as fast in them as I was able to in my hiking boots.

It was silly of me to worry, though, because we didn't even need to walk any great distance to get to Q Bar. The taxi picked us up in the dress circle and deposited us right outside the door, and it was so early that we didn't have to line up.

When security ID checked us, she spent a good twenty seconds examining my card. Then, she looked up sharply at me. "You taking the piss?" she said.

I stared at her. She was like the evil female version of Jonah and she sounded really angry. "I'm sorry?" Maybe I should have worn my boots, after all. I sized her up: she'd flatten me.

"You got anything else in there with your name on it?" I showed her my credit card. She compared them and then narrowed her eyes at me again. "You're actually Lara Croft. The one on TV? Here?"

"Yes…" I said, aware that the confrontation had got the attention of several other women waiting to be admitted.

"Interesting. Okay, then," she said, looking a little smug. I went to take my cards from her and she snatched them away. "Wait. Autograph first."

Sam snorted behind me and then tried to smother giggles as I signed the woman's notepad with the pen she gave me.

After that, she let us in.

There was nothing particularly remarkable about the club except that the vast majority of the patrons were women. I wasn't sure what I expected about a girls' night at a gay bar; maybe I had thought there would be a lot more shaved heads and football jerseys. There was the odd woman wearing a shirt or looking quite androgynous, but for the most part any of the women there would have fit right in at the pubs and clubs we frequented in London.

Sam had her hand on my lower back. "Are you okay with this?" she asked me.

I looked at her. "You mean with being in a gay bar?" We'd been to a few before – mostly ones filled with men – so I wasn't sure why she'd think I wasn't alright.

"No," she said. "With all these people."

I looked back at them. I knew what she meant: I couldn't really handle being in crowds, now. I waited for it to sink in and for the anxiety to hit me, but it didn't. "Yeah, I actually am," I said, surprised.

She chuckled. "I'm getting less and less worried you're going to get over your lesbian phase," she said, and then took my hand and made a beeline for the bar.

While she was trying to decide what cocktail to order, I craned my neck over the women to try and see if I could spot Min or Bree. Min was quite tall, so it shouldn't be too much bother unless she was already seated somewhere.

Sam put a drink in my hand. I looked down at it. "Very funny," I said. I didn't even need to taste it to know what it was this time. "It's a Velvet Lemon."

Sam sighed. "Goddamn it, I thought I had you this time." Sam had a game she played where she tried to buy me cocktails to find one I didn't recognise. Of course, I'd worked in three bars over three years in different parts of town, so I doubted she'd ever order one I didn't know. It was entertaining watching her try, though. "Whatever. It would have been an awesome drink to defeat you with."

I took a few sips of it and made a face. "You made it a double."

She tapped her glass against mine. "You bet! A double Velvet Lemon. I couldn't resist." She poured at least half of her own drink down her throat and coughed at the strength of it. "Wow, six standard drinks. I might finally get some fun out of you. Come on!" she dragged me over to search the lounges for Min and Bree.

Bree found us first. Since she had the legs of an eighteen year old, she was wearing shorter shorts than even Sam owned coupled with knee-high boots. I supposed she was celebrating being allowed to look like a prostitute without people being slapped in jail for ogling her.

"Oh, my God!" she said as she rushed over to Sam. "I love that dress!"

While Sam and Bree were busy admiring each other's clothing – or lack thereof, really – I spotted Min wandering up to us with two drinks. She was wearing a dress shirt with a tie and she flashed me a charming smile. I opened my mouth and closed it again. I actually sort of fancied her. I had never thought I'd be the type of person to be attracted to someone who was so androgynous; it seemed I was still learning new things about myself, even now. I wondered if it was because she looked like a boy or because she was a girl.

Min handed one of the drinks to Bree, who took it and gulped it down again with the enthusiasm of someone who was barely legal.

Sam finished off her drink. "Whoa," she said. "I think I've got about ten minutes before I'm absolutely wasted. I'm going to spend that dancing." She took my hand a third time.

I looked at my drink. I'd hardly drunk any of it, but I couldn't just leave it here. "I'll stay with these guys," I told her.

Sam rolled her eyes. "Oh, no, you won't," she said amicably. "If you pull the pole out of your ass there will be a lot more room in you for alcohol."

Min pretended to salute me and drank some of hers. I scrunched up my face and poured as much of the Velvet Lemon as I could down my throat. I managed to get to about three quarters of it and gave up because my throat was burning and my eyes were watering. I had no problems mixing drinks but when it came to actually drinking them I didn't have Sam's constitution. She applauded my effort anyway and let me put the last of my drink on the table, pulling me out onto the floor.

I wasn't drunk enough at all to be out there, but at least I couldn't see anyone who was either looking us as or trying to pretend they weren't. It was dark, anyway. We were probably fine.

The best thing about dancing with Sam was that she always held onto part of me and moved me herself so I didn't actually need to try and figure out how I should be dancing. She guided me and I let her, laughing along with some of her silly moves.

The alcohol didn't take long to hit me and pretty soon I was dancing along with her, probably making a complete fool of myself. At that point I didn't care, though. It reminded me of old times when first started going clubbing together late into the night and how we show up to classes the following day with Red Bull and sunglasses.

The floor was full and people kept bumping into us. At one point Sam tripped over someone's leg and went hurtling into me. I caught her but in the process struggled to remain upright myself. Together, however, despite how hard we were giggling, we managed to stand back up.

Before I knew it, Sam had her arms around my shoulders, and was leaning on me heavily and kissing me. It felt good and I wanted more, but even in the state that I was I couldn't forget the fact we were standing with a hundred people around us. I had to try a few times to managed to actually pull her off me.

"What are you doing, Sam?" I yelled at her over the music.

"I'm kissing my fucking girlfriend," she slurred. "Is there something wrong with that?"

"Can't it wait until we get back to the hotel?"

She rolled her eyes. "Why should it have to?" she said loosely. "Just kiss me, no one cares even half as much as you do, look." She swept her arms out at the people around us and nearly clocked one of them. "Let's have some fun for once, Lara!"

My idea of fun was _not_ making out with someone in public. I stopped her from kissing me again and she stood back. "Sorry if I'm not 'fun' enough for you, Sam," I said to her. "I just don't get off on sharing my private life with other people and seeing awful pictures of me plastered all over the Sun."

Sam closed her eyes for a second as if she couldn't cope with what I said. "Lara, didn't you get the memo? Whatever you do they'll write crap about you. Whatever you do! You might as well fucking enjoy your life and stick it to them than worry the whole time about what strangers think! You're stupid if you think being uptight about it is going to make any sort of difference at all!"

I didn't realise that Min and Bree were dancing next to us until I saw them very furtively trying to move away. I felt awful for them, no one should have to hear us fighting. I looked back at Sam.

"At least now I know how you really feel," I told her and turned on my heel to move off the dance floor.

"Lara, wait—" Sam said, grabbing my wrist. I twisted to glare at her and then pulled aggressively out of her grasp.

I still retained some measure of coordination and was able to march out of the club without crashing into anyone or tripping over anything. Sam took much longer than I did to emerge and I'd already hailed a taxi by the time she staggered out. For a moment I really wanted to close the door and leave her there – but even though I was really angry with her, I couldn't abandon her in the middle of the night in a foreign country. I shifted over to the other side of the back seat and let her in.

"Park Hyatt," I told the driver and he pulled away from the curb.

Sam and I sat in silence on opposite sides of the back seat for the short trip back.

I stared ahead, trying to figure out how a really enjoyable day had turned into a total nightmare in what felt like the blink of an eye. My head was swimming from the alcohol and I couldn't come up with anything useful. I just felt dazed and angry.

When the taxi delivered us to the lobby, Sam at least had the sense to not argue with me and let me pay.

I had a shower as soon as we got back to the room. The hot water combined with how drunk I was made me lightheaded and there were a few times that I worried I might actually pass out. I wasn't normally a big fan of getting completely sloshed, but I was thankful at least for not being able to think clearly about what was happening.

When I walked out of the bathroom in one of the complimentary robes, I expected that Sam would have passed out on the bed. She _was_ on the bed, but instead of being unconscious, she was crying.

It was awful to watch her body shaking with every sob and to know I'd caused it.

I stood in the doorway, unsure if I should comfort her or leave her alone since it was clearly my fault. I would have _hated_ myself if I had been sober. I sat on the edge of the bed and put a hand on her leg. That just made her cry harder.

"I'm sorry, Sam," I said. "This is just how I am."

She nodded and closed her eyes against further tears. "I know," she said. "I knew before, too." She looked like she was really struggling with what she wanted to say; her chin was quivering and her eyes were jammed shut. "Lara," she said. "Please, be honest with me."

I felt my stomach drop, terrified I was going to hear an ultimatum.

"Was it a huge selfish mistake to put that footage of you on TV when I knew what would happen?"

That wasn't what I expected to hear and I didn't know quite how to respond. When I didn't say anything, her face folded up and she turned away from me, sobbing into her pillow.

Feeling helpless, I rubbed her back. "No," I told her. "I just kind of thought I'd end up like the female version of Whitman with maybe a slightly larger fanbase. I should have known with you directing and editing I'd end up bigger than Ben Hur." It was supposed to be a compliment, but she didn't seem to acknowledge it.

Eventually, she rolled onto her back again. There was eye makeup all over her cheeks. "I knew it would be big," she said. "I should have warned you, but I was only thinking about what a great production it was going to be." She sniffed, rubbing her eyes with her knuckles. "It's just… " She swallowed. "You're just so beautiful and amazing that I want to, like, shout out to the whole world I'm with you. I want everyone to know that you're my girlfriend because I'm just so proud to be with you."

"I thought it doesn't matter what other people think?"

She pressed her lips together. "It's not even about them. I'm just so happy with you and when you don't let me touch you or kiss you, it hurts, Lara." She looked at me. "Like, I'm so happy and it feels like you're ashamed or something."

The thought of Sam feeling like that was painful even despite how drunk I was. It was just like being kicked in the chest. I didn't know what I could possibly say to make it feel better. I was constantly thinking about how much I loved and admired her, but I shouldn't have to constantly be mauling her in public to prove that, should I?

"It's not like that, Sam," was all I could manage.

"I know," she said, "but it still hurts."

I climbed up on the bed and lay next to her. She put her head on my arm and we stared at the ceiling. Everything felt so surreal and so wrong. Why was I fighting with her? I loved her with every piece of my heart. We shouldn't be hurting each other.

I just couldn't wait to get away of this city and into the wilderness. Bring on the poisonous snakes, I thought. Just get me out of here.

"You know what the worst part of this is?" she asked me after a long period of silence. I shook my head. "Who's the one person you call when your partner makes you really upset?"

My stomach knotted. "Your best friend."

"Yeah," she said, turning her head to look at me miserably. "Exactly."


	4. Chapter 4

I had the alcohol to thank for actually being able to fall asleep that night.

I woke up the following morning with the dawn sunlight streaming into the room and Sam cuddled up to my side. I closed my eyes with the intention of going peacefully back to sleep, but then I remembered what happened the night before. It hit me solidly.

If Sam woke up, she might remember how upset with me she was and roll away. I lay very still.

Last night... I almost wished I'd drunk enough to have no memory of it, because etched into my retinas was Sam's crestfallen expression every time I had to refuse her. I couldn't even sort out my feelings about it, either. One the one hand, part of me hated her for even putting me in a position where I had to make her feel like that in the first place. On the other, why _couldn't_ she kiss her girlfriend in a gay bar? It wasn't as if that was the same as standing on top of the Sydney Harbour Bridge surrounded by tourists with my tongue down her throat. On that count, I understood her point and I could imagine how much it hurt her that her girlfriend didn't like to be touched in public. Intellectually, I completely got it, I did. But it sort of didn't matter how much I was able to theoretically understand her, because I felt just so horribly uncomfortable if she _did_ do anything. No amount of rationalising made that feeling go away.

Sam may have wished we were more like Min and Bree, but those two didn't have to worry about a photo of them kissing ending up on the front page of a tabloid and haunting them for the rest of their professional careers.

In the grand scheme of things, it wasn't really the actual photo or the tabloid story that I was worried about. It would end up being more than a photo. Every interview I ever did from that point on would somehow end up with the host trying to push the topic of Sam and I. I didn't want to discuss it, I didn't want anyone asking those questions or thinking that stuff about me. I just wanted to be a professional archaeologist.

God, I sounded like Whitman, didn't I?

Sam must have woken up at some point. "You're doing that thing again," she mumbled neutrally into my arm, not rolling away. "Staring off into space."

"Well, I have a lot to think about."

She opened her eyes immediately when I said that. There was some measure of panic in them. "You do?"

I looked back at the ceiling. "I don't want to keep hurting you, but I don't just want to give in and do something I don't feel comfortable with, either. I can't figure out what the solution is. If there is one."

Sam was frozen in place. She looked guarded, as if she was expecting me to say something really hurtful. "So what happens now?"

I shrugged. "We just keep trying to figure it out, I suppose. That's all we can do."

She exhaled audibly and relaxed her head back on my arm. Then, she covered her eyes with her hand and laughed bitterly for a few moments. "Oh, my God, Lara," she said, putting her hand under the duvet again. "You just scared the shit out of me. I thought for a second there you were going to say we should break up."

That explained her panic. "Oh, no," I said. "Actually that didn't even occur to me." I hugged her against my side. I was just so relieved she sounded fine; hearing her crying for so long last night had been absolutely unbearable. "I'm so glad you're still talking to me. I don't know what I'd do if you weren't."

"Me, too." Her throat bobbed as she swallowed. "I just… Sometimes it's not enough to just, like, hold your hand or hug you. I don't understand why it's enough for you."

"It's not, Sam. That's why I'm _with_ you."

We watched each other. Sam eventually spoke. "I fucking hate this," she said. "Last night was just so awful, I don't want to fight with you. Can we please just try and pretend it all never happened and try to have fun? I won't do anything else."

It felt like something we should probably really talk through, but I certainly didn't feel like having that discussion and dragging up all those emotions again. If she didn't want to talk about it, well, good. I wouldn't push her. I kissed her forehead and changed the subject. "So what's on the cards today?"

She looked thankful. "I can't remember exactly," she said. "I think we were supposed go visit all the bays, but we did that with the other girls yesterday. I guess we could go swimming, Sydney's supposed to have some great beaches. They might be a little crowded, though."

I made a face. "Maybe we'll give them a miss, then," I said. "Could we just… I don't know. Hire a car and leave for a day or so? Wollemi National Park is quite close to Sydney." Inside it somewhere was one of the places I'd wanted to visit. There would be quite a lot of heavy hiking, though, and we might need to camp there. "How's your head?"

She thought for a moment. "I don't think I'm hungover."

I wasn't, either, and I was feeling better and better the more I thought about the prospect of getting out into the fresh air. Especially if we were looking for this particular site I was interested in. There was almost no literature on it; I'd stumbled on a paper about it by accident when I was reading about the national park. "The park has this cave somewhere in it called 'Eagle's Reach', it's just _full_ of cave paintings and some of them are thought to be four thousand years old. More than that, though – the location and the paintings are a secret. No one except a select few archaeologists and the Aboriginal Elders of the surrounding areas actually know where the cave is. It's hidden somewhere in a five-thousand square kilometre national park."

Sam laughed at me. "Oh, my God. Let me get the camera. Say that again, exactly like you just did."

The camera was on Sam's bedside table, and it only took her a second to set it up and point it at me. I repeated what I'd said, and added, "I have some ideas how we might find them, though. There were some passages in one of the papers I read that referred to specific geographical features nearby."

I could see Sam's smile underneath the LCD. "Here's the inside story on Lara, folks: just tell her about this amazing historic site, and then tell her that it's hidden." I laughed at her as she continued, "It's like archaeology porn or something."

"Well, the lure of the forbidden _is_ part of the appeal," I told her. "Can you imagine what it must be like if they're so desperate to keep it a secret? I can't wait to see."

" _If_ we find it," Sam said. "Five thousand square kilometres." I gave her a look, and she sighed. "Yeah, sorry, I forget who I'm talking to. You'll find it if it means we're out there for six months going over the place with toothbrushes."

I probably would, too, but I didn't want to mess up her plans. "How long have we got in Sydney?"

She checked the itinerary on her phone. "Another two days. Then we're flying up to the Gold Coast, and I'm totally not giving that up."

"Well. I guess we have two days, then. We'd better get going."

Sam lowered the camera, still smiling at me. "You're adorable," she said. "You get so excited about this stuff. I hope the whole adorableness doesn't interfere with people's view of you as a total badass. Although, maybe the dichotomy would be interesting..." She put the camera to one side, rubbing her eyes and yawning. "Speaking about adorable people, I should really Facebook Bree and apologise for just totally disappearing on them."

I winced, but didn't say anything about it as I got out of bed.

After I'd double and triple-checked that I'd definitely brought all the gear we'd need to go hiking, I spoke with the manager of hotel who was only too happy to hire us a car. We ended up with a nice mid-range sedan that was an easy drive out of Sydney and onto the highway. I'd been absently following the directions of the GPS when the female voice said, "Turn right into route sixty-nine," pronouncing 'route' the English way, which was like 'root'.

It took us a few seconds to react to it. Sam snickered and turned the camera around to her face. "What a great idea," she said and then pointed it at me. "It's probably safer to do what she says. You know, to avoid getting lost in the bush."

I would have put my head in my hands if I weren't driving. "Sam!" Her pun was so bad that I nearly missed my turn-off onto the road the GPS had indicated. I mock-glared at the camera momentarily.

She leaned back in the seat, looking smug. "This place just keeps on giving," she said, and then switched the camera off and went back to her phone.

"Wow," she said almost immediately. When I glanced at her, she elaborated. "Okay, so, Bree has something like a thousand people friended. This morning I told her she could post that we hung out with her yesterday. She didn't even mention Q Bar. But even just saying that started World War Three."

She read out a few of the comments to me: one of them said that it was really cool I was happy to be seen with lesbians and wasn't it great that times were changing? The one directly after it said that the fact the previous commenter assumed I was straight and would be happy to 'tolerate' lesbians was clearly a sign that times _weren't_ changing. The thread started off as relatively civil debate but quickly degenerated into personal insults. Sam read out the last comment to me in a flat voice, " _All I'm reading is blah blah heteronormative bullshit. The fifties are over, you pack of fucking idiots. Try fucking evolving."_

I looked blankly at the road in front of me. "Wow," I said, echoing her first assessment of it. "Bree is friends with these people? She's so… nice."

Sam shrugged. "Well, as friendly as you can be with a thousand people from all over the world." She scrolled back up through them. "Not all of them are like that, though. There's a really good one here about how you have this huge opportunity to be a role model for lesbians everywhere and that you should totally come out, big time."

"Why can't I just be a role model for young archaeologists everywhere?"

I heard the sound of Sam's iPhone locking and then she put it back in her backpack. "What, like all five of them?" I could feel her grinning at the side of my face. "I said this like a hundred times before, but people are only going to be interested in this archaeology stuff if they're interested in you."

"I'm beginning to think you and I have different definitions for 'interested'," I said, and then spotted a mountain range spreading across the horizon as we rounded a bend. "Look at this!"

"Five thousand square kilometres," Sam said as she looked across it, not sounding quite as enthusiastic as I was.

I picked where we'd leave the car based on the location I thought the caves might be closest to. We'd already packed our backpacks prior to leaving the hotel room, but Sam wasn't an old hand at them and needed help getting hers on. "You can't be serious," she said, as helped her sit it on her hips. "I'm not going to make _a_ kilometre in this, let alone however many you want us to walk."

Her bag only contained her bedroll, some food and her rock climbing gear. Mine, on the other hand, contained the tent and a whole host of other equipment that I thought we might end up needing. Roth had made me carry twice this weight when we were doing the crags in Scotland, as well.

I pulled the camera off her and took a few steps back so I could get her whole body in the shot. She may have been wearing the whole set of professional hiking gear, but she was bent forward as if the small bag was crippling her.

"Here's your director," I said, "complaining about a tiny little backpack that weighs a colossal _half a stone._ "

"Oh, my God, I'm small, okay? Whatever, let's get going." She staggered dramatically down the embankment as if she had an elephant on her back. I followed her.

I'd known the hike was going to be hard, but I hadn't really anticipated _how_ hard. Hiking through Britain and Japan was absolutely nothing compared to Australia. There were no beaten paths at all and the terrain in the park was up and down like a rollercoaster. It got to a point where even _I_ was puffed and needed to lean my hands on my knees periodically to catch my breath.

Sam was scared to climb over or touch boulders or fallen trees in case they contained venomous spiders or snakes, and while _I_ was crawling over and under them she regaled me with entertaining facts about how their venom killed their victims.

At one point, we did saw a mob of kangaroos in the distance. We stopped for a moment to get some footage of them, but they must have caught wind of us because they quickly hopped into the brush.

By midday, the sun was becoming quite fierce. We slathered ourselves in sunscreen, ate some slightly soggy petrol station sandwiches, and pushed on. Soon after we'd eaten, we arrived at the Colo River. At the point we met it the current was so strong the water was white and opaque. We kept walking along it, looking for somewhere to cross.

Sam had the camera angled upwards around us at the sandstone cliffs sloping up from the river for most of the distance.

I looked up; the height of them was simply staggering. They loomed over the gorge with such an oppressive presence that it almost felt like there was a weight on me as I admired them. The only place that bore any resemblance to these was the gorges around Victoria Falls in Zambia, and even they only continued for a short distance. These cliffs went on and on as we hiked along the base of them.

"We have to cross that, don't we?" Sam said at one point, looking at the roaring river. I just grinned at her and she gave me a flat stare. "You scare me sometimes," she said, but she was smiling.

We actually didn't up crossing the riverbed. The water was far too rough and not even slinging a rope across it was going to prevent either of us from being knocked off our feet and swept away.

I looked upward at the gorge, instead. "Up there," I said, pointing at two ridges on either side of the sandstone cliffs that were reasonably close together. They were quite high up, but they _were_ over the river so I doubted the fall would be fatal. "If we can get up there, I can sling the rope across and we can slide down it."

She looked at me, her eyes as wide as saucers. "Good thing I bought us travel insurance," was her assessment of my idea.

There was a narrow passage up the cliff face that was probably caved by water hundreds of years ago. The incline was steep but was probably safe enough to do without strapping on our rock-climbing equipment. It still took us a good half an hour to get to the height we needed to be at to edge out way along to the spot I'd picked out to cross at.

As I walked up to the edge, I looked appraisingly the relatively short distance we had to travel and tried to decide if I should get the harnesses out. I opted not to for the moment and stepped out onto a ridge, looking across at the platform to our side. Sam hesitated and followed me onto the rim. We both hugged the wall.

Sam was looking down. She knocked a few pebbles with her feet and they fell through the air beneath us, clattering across the the rocks below. "Zombie centaurs, zombie centaurs…" she was muttering under her breath as she edged along behind me.

I had to laugh at how odd she sounded. " _What?_ "

Sam stopped chanting her mantra. "Well, it's not as if the ledge is running at me with huge spears," she said. "And if I survived zombie centaurs, I can survive this."

We did make it to the small platform without any mishaps. There was no mystery how I was going to anchor the rope on either side; I'd packed us both a climbing axe. Before we did make the trip across the gap, though, I did make us stop and clip on all our safety gear.

Sam looked down at her harness. "These things look kind of kinky," she said. "Like you're going to hang me somewhere."

"That's exactly what I'm going to do with you," I told her, and she gave me one of those looks from underneath her lashes. In response, I pushed her against the back wall of the ledge – not roughly, but forcefully enough for it to startle her. Taking a step into her, we stood hip-to-hip. I still had a fistful of her safety harness. She had an odd thing about me pushing her about.

Her eyes were heavy-lidded. "Adds new meaning to 'safe sex'," she said, and then brought her lips against mine. We kissed for a few seconds, but both of us were kind of sweaty and uncomfortable so it wasn't as pleasant as it could have been.

When we parted, Sam's cheeks were flushed anyway. "Yeah, okay," she said, almost as breathless as she'd been when we'd been climbing. "Let's camp here for the night." It was the middle of the afternoon.

"Later," I said with a grin as I turned around began the arduous process of trying to throw my axe so it hooked on something safe enough for us to slide down it. After a few minutes, I eventually had it in a position I felt happy with. I clipped the ring on my safety harness to it, and slid the short distance between the cliffs.

I had expected Sam to require much more encouragement, but she was so quickly on the rope after me that we nearly collided on the other side while I was trying to unclip myself. I must have looked surprised, because she made a 'no sweat' motion with her hand to her forehead and winked.

I had to remind myself to stop underestimating her.

Since we were already quite high up, we continued upward up a small recess in the rock until finally we reached the top of the cliffs as twilight fell.

Sam lay straight down on her stomach on the smooth rock plateau. "Just put my sleeping bag over me," she said, her voice muffled by her cheek pressed into the rock. "I'll sleep here."

I was laughing at her as I turned… and saw the whole landscape of the Blue Mountains beneath us.

It was immense, carpeted in a forest of eucalypts with the bare rock of high peaks surging out of the bushland. The mountains looked like they extended along the horizon forever; I couldn't see where the road divided it or any sign people had ever populated this country. It was like we were the only two people in the world, and I was standing with it at my feet.

This view must have been the same for thousands of years, untouched and perfectly preserved.

I felt an odd sense of being frozen in time. Immovable like the cliffs and anchored to the ground like the roots of those mammoth trees we'd passed on the way to the river. It made my hair stand on end and I wasn't sure what caused it. Those didn't sound like my thoughts.

Sam had stood and wandered up next to me, camera in tow. "God, that's incredible," she said, panning across the horizon. "Don't you feel like we're looking at a view that's a million years old?"

That was so astonishingly similar to what I'd been thinking that I turned around to look at her. We were frequently on the same wavelength, but that was _too_ close a wavelength. I felt uneasy, and I couldn't pinpoint why. She didn't notice me looking at her so I dismissed my discomfort and looked back at the beautiful view.

There was no wind at all, so we decided that there was no danger in pitching our tent just back off the plateau. As the sun set over the ancient horizon, I built a fire on the flat rock and put some water on to boil.

We sat back against a boulder near the hearth, shoulders together and fingers interlaced.

Apart from the crackling of the fire, it was completely silent. No traffic sounds, no birds, nothing.

Sam put her head on my shoulder. "I am _so_ exhausted," she told me after we'd been sitting there for a while. "Like, I totally want to take advantage of the fact we're alone and we're somewhere amazing to finally get with you for like the first time in about a hundred years, but when I think about what it involves I'd just rather sleep."

I chuckled. "Who are you and what have you done with my Sam?"

She smiled. "I know, right? Who even am I? I don't even think I'm going to be awake to drink that tea let alone whatever should really come after it."

I didn't really care about the tea, either, so I stood and poured the water that had been for the tea onto the fire. We retired into the tent to sleep.

I had absolutely the oddest dream that night. It was comparatively simple compared to the elaborate nightmares I still had about Yamatai, but no less vivid.

I was standing at the edge of the cliff we were camped near with the rising sun behind it. Out on the horizon, I could see vibrant shimmering in the valley where the river was flowing. It took me a moment to realise that it wasn't the water that was shimmering, but the multi-coloured scales of a several-kilometre long snake as it slithered. It was travelling along the path of the river, burrowing through the mountains. The mountains parted for it and its scales scraped along the sandstone of the gorge, fragments of them falling and causing its path to glitter in the moonlight.

I woke up.

Sam was still asleep against me, breathing deeply. Just the sound of her being perfectly relaxed made me feel better. I snuggled a little closer to her, reaching over to check the time on my phone: It was nearly six in the morning. We'd need to get up soon, anyway.

I lay back into the sleeping bag. It wasn't particularly strange that I was dreaming about the Rainbow Serpent; I'd spent enough time reading about it in the past few days for some part of the idea to have become lodged in my subconscious. At least it wasn't a nightmare.

I must have been a little restless, because woke Sam up when I turned over again. She yawned and turned into me. "How'd you sleep?" she mumbled.

I nodded. "Well, I think." I decided not to tell her about my dream.

That made her look up. "Really? That's awesome!" She lay her head back down. "We should go hiking through, like, hardcore bushland every time you can't sleep."

It would have been nice to have a lie-in, but since we only had one day to find the caves and get back to the car, I didn't want to waste any time. We had muesli bars for breakfast and then emerged from the tent.

If I thought the view was amazing last night, I'd seen nothing.

The entire bushland was blanketed in low-lying cloud beneath us, with only the odd craggy peak poking out of it. The only thing that was missing from it was the fairy-tale castle perched in the middle of the sky.

My legs and back were stiff but soon loosened as we got going again.

My guesswork put the caves somewhere around where we were now, give or take a few kilometres. It couldn't be too far because 'Eagle's Reach' rather implied that it was somewhere up high and we were on the highest crag in this area of the park. The apex of the hill we were on was probably a few kilometres around, so I figured we'd walk all the way around it and see what we came up with.

Sam was quiet from the heavy exercise, and it was strange to be hiking in silence with her. When we'd been on our way to St Francis' Folly in Greece, I'd had so much fun just chatting as we travelled. Our silence now just served to exacerbate the eerie quiet of the peak.

My skin was literally prickling as we stood on the edge of a small chasm in the rock. On the other side, I could see a cave entrance. I had an uncanny feeling we were right on it. I pointed to the entrance. "See? I think that might be it."

Sam didn't look quite as enthusiastic about my discovery as I did. "Please tell me I can rest in there."

I laughed once. "Come on," I took her hand and led her to the edge of the chasm.

It was dark inside it and I couldn't see how deep it was, but I was comfortably certain both of us would make the distance. I wound up for the jump and powered over it, but my backpack must have caught on something because I jerked sideways and felt my shoulder collide with the side of the chasm. My legs didn't hit anything.

In slow motion, I felt myself tumble away from the rock ledge and into the air.

Sam _screamed._ The sound echoed over all the rocks around us and I heard my voice somewhere in there, too.

My scream cut short as my side connected solidly with rock much faster than I had expected it to. I sat up, dazed. Sam was shining the forward light of the camera down towards me. When it fell on my face, I heard her cry out with relief. "Oh, my God, Lara! Oh, my God! Okay, I'm coming down. Are you hurt?" She climbed down awkwardly in with me, kissing me firmly and wrapping me in a desperate hug. "I have no idea how you didn't make that jump, did you roll your ankle or something?"

"My bag caught, I think…"

She shook her head, pulling away from me. "No, it couldn't have. You were out in the middle of the air and then you…" The words died on her lips and I saw her focusing on something. "Oh, wow…" She held the camera up behind me.

I twisted and saw what she was looking at – an enormous motif of an Eagle Ancestor painted on wall of the cave. Eagle's Reach was so well hidden I never would have found it if I'd not fallen into it.

She panned it around the whole cave. It was simply _covered_ in dozens of paintings. Some of them were just blown stencils of hands, others where whole scenes of different animals and birds. The hands were grouped in all different-sized sets, like families. There was even a tiny infant hand amongst them. It was so odd to think that hand had probably grown into a full-sized person, lived their whole life and then died thousands of years ago.

While I was admiring them, I noticed Sam shaking her camera. "You've got to be fucking kidding me," she said. "I've been jinxed by the camera gods."

"Battery gone?"

She shook her head. "It won't record for some reason, but it can't be an electrical issue because the light and playback work just fine, look." She demonstrated the playback for me.

I thought about what I'd just imagined – about the person whose hand I'd looked at growing old and dying. Something occurred to me. "You know Aboriginal people aren't supposed to say the names of the dead," I said. "Well, they're not supposed to show pictures of them, either."

Sam looked up at me from her camera, stricken. She then looked back at the wall. "If each one of these pictures is meant to represent a person, that's an awful lot of dead people." She shivered. "God, that's creepy. Do you think that's it?"

I looked back the Eagle Ancestor. It stared back at me with fixed eyes. "Yes," I said.

Sam put the camera away completely. "Well, I don't want to rub them the wrong way," she said. "We're pretty high above the ground up here."

Without the artificial light, we had to rely on the dull glow of sheltered sunlight from the mouth of the cave. It was enough, but I had to walk right up to every individual painting to see the detail. I took out my notebook and tried to replicate some of the paintings that interested me; there were some that I could not make head nor tail of. Perhaps Prof Chamberlain would know who I should speak to about Australian pre-history. I could ask whoever he referred me to what the shapes meant.

Sam was uncomfortable. "Do you feel that?" she kept asking me. Every few minutes she'd pace across the cave.

I _did_ feel it, but I also didn't think it was necessarily a problem. I found the presence of the cave to be much like that of the Scion; there was something about it, but it in itself wasn't either malevolent or benevolent. It was just… there.

As I was standing back to compare my sketches with the originals, however, I had a feeling that I could see every single pair of eyes on the wall of that cave staring at me. It was chilling.

"I think it's about time we leave," I suggested.

"My god, I thought you'd never let us go," Sam said, sounding incredibly relieved. She quickly corrected herself. "I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm happy we found your cave. I just feel like I'm standing in the middle of a packed stadium in here."

I looked back at the faces on the wall. They stared back at me, as unmoving as they had been for centuries. That, at least, was comforting.

The mouth of the cave actually opened out onto the cliff-face. Sam peeked over it. "How are we going to climb down that?" she asked.

I held my hand out to her, glancing at my waist. "Axe?" She helped me unhook it from my belt and handed it to me. I tied the end of our safety rope to it. "We're not going to climb," I said. "We're going to abseil."

I spent a few minutes rigging up all the ropes and descenders, and then looped it all through the belt of our harnesses. The last thing I needed to do was find somewhere to hook my axe. The only safe spot I could find was in a cut in the rock where I would need to actually wedge the whole thing. I wasn't sure I was going to be able to actually get the axe back after that, but I'd rather choose a safe spot and lose an axe than choose an unsafe spot and lose our lives. I jammed it in the rock and we both lowered ourselves down the rope, one after the other, working our way back into the gorge.

Once we were down at the base of the cliff again, I looked back up the rope. I whipped it a few times, but as I expected, it was stuck there.

Well, no use crying over spilt milk, I supposed, and took out a pocket knife to cut the rest of the rope free in case we needed it.

"Won't the paintings be angry if we leave the axe up there?" Sam had her arms crossed nervously as she looked up the cliff face.

I gave her a look. "It's a nice axe," I reminded her. "They might like it."

The point of the river at which we'd arrived had a serendipitously wide bed and the current was slower. Tied to each other, we managed with some difficulty to wade across it with our backpacks held high over our heads. We were soaked up to our chests, but since we could change later at the hotel it wasn't any real concern.

At that was left was to walk along the gorge and back into the bush towards where we parked the car. Exhausted, we navigated the rocky edges of the river in silence.

We were almost at the point where we'd need to move away from river and head back into the thick bushland again and I'd stopped to check the compass. Sam had taken the opportunity to switch the memory cards and was just inserting the new one when we heard the sound of undergrowth being trodden on.

At that second the fat body of a small Wollemi pine bent and a thin girl stepped out over it and nearly collided with me. All I saw was high-visibility fluorescent tubing and blond hair as I stagged backwards, yelling. My first instinct was to grab one of the lose rocks from the riverbed behind me and swing it into her head. Luckily, I didn't.

The girl shrieked with surprise, double-taking when she saw me. Her pretty face hardened. " _You_!" she hissed in an American accent. "What are _you_ doing here!"

"I'm so sorry!" I said, standing up and throwing my hands up to pacify her. "I didn't mean to surprise you. I'm Lara and this is—" I'd gestured at Sam but she interrupted me.

"I know who you are," she said icily. "I don't live under a rock." She looked sharply at Sam. "And by the way, because I know who you are, I'll know who to sue if I see my face on TV."

Sam mutely lowered the camera, looking as stunned as I was.

I looked back at the girl. She was probably our age and had very delicate features. She was also quite emaciated; she was even thinner than Sam, if that were possible. And where Sam looked healthy, this girl looked sick, quite sick. Underneath her limp blond hair she was pale as a ghost. I thought perhaps it was an eating disorder, but I noticed she had a regular Coke in the mesh of her backpack.

One thing was for sure, she wasn't going to have an easy time getting across the river with that physique. "I'm sorry again," I said, supposing that the shock of running into us had startled her and made her angry. Maybe offering her some assistance would set her in a good mood again. "Listen, if you need to cross the river, about ten or so kilometres up there's a wide—"

She rolled her eyes. "Just stop," she said, adjusting the angle of her backpack and straightening. "I know where I'm going, okay?"

Well, there goes that idea, I thought, thinking that this girl didn't _want_ to be in a good mood. "Just trying to help," I muttered.

"Well, don't," she said, and then walked past us in the direction we'd come from. "I don't need your help."

When she'd gone, Sam and I just stared at each other for a moment.

"What a total bitch," Sam said. "Seriously, what the hell? Whatever side of the bed _she_ got out of this morning, she should burn the fucking thing and buy a new one."

I tended to agree with Sam, but still I stared up the gorge where she'd headed. She said knew where she was going. I thought on it for a moment and then shrugged. She may have looked like she'd just been through a rather nasty round of chemo, but she was wearing professional hiking gear. Maybe she was just an outdoor enthusiast who needed to eat more.

"Maybe she's one of Bree's Facebook friends," I suggested. That made Sam grin. "Come on," I said. "Let's get back to the car. I'm looking forward to a hot shower and a comfy bed."


	5. Chapter 5

That strange, ethereal sensation of being frozen in time persisted all the way back from the Blue Mountains.

Sam fell asleep in the car. When we pulled into the valet circle at the hotel I was very tempted to carry her back up to the bedroom. In the end, I decided to wake her up. It wasn't that I was worried about anyone seeing us – it was too late for anyone except the staff to be up – but my muscles were shaking and I wasn't certain that I wouldn't drop her now that I wasn't filled with adrenaline.

I stroked a lock of hair out of her face. "Wake up, sleepyhead."

Her eyelids fluttered and she smiled lazily at me. "I had the weirdest dream," she told me as I held the door open for her. She just stared at it, unmoving. "It was kind of like Futurama except that I'd gone back a thousand years instead of forward and I was just standing there on this hill in the middle of nowhere and I'm like, 'Oh, my God, where's Lara?'."

I copied the 'tada' motion she sometimes did. She chuckled. "Let's just go straight to bed," she suggested as she stiffly pulled herself out of the car. "I'm totally wrecked."

As I helped her out, the concierge came buzzing over to take our packs out of the boot for us.

In the room and once our backpacks had been delivered, Sam stripped everything off except her underwear and lay on her back on the bed. There was a visible colour difference between the skin that had been exposed and the skin that hadn't. Surely the Australian sun couldn't be so bad as to tan us even with the 50+ SPF sunscreen we'd been using? I walked up to her to get a closer look. It was dust.

I laughed, taking one of her arms and trying to pull her up. "Shower first," I told her, "you're filthy."

She opened her eyes and grinned at me. "Don't you know it," she said, and pulled me down on top of her.

"I thought you were 'wrecked'?" She ignored me and took my t-shirt off. After she'd unthreaded my belt, she made an unsuccessful attempt at my trousers. "I'm still wearing the gaiters," I told her when she looked confused about why she wasn't able to get the pants further down than my knees.

She shrugged cheerfully. "Whatever, this is enough."

We were getting dirt all over the pristine white cotton duvet. I felt bad about it and wondered if we'd get into trouble. Before I could worry too much, though, Sam had confiscated my bra and looped a hand around my neck to pull me down to kiss her.

She was impossible, I thought, but I let her keep going until I was on my back and she was lying on top of me with a handful of one of my breasts. She pulled back, grinning. "You know, I want to actually kiss you more places than your lips, but you're, like, _covered_ in dirt." She drew a finger along my neck and showed me what was on it. "And I know I said I loved it when you were dirty, but this is taking it a little far."

"Let's have a shower," I suggested, trying to get up.

"Hooooo, no," Sam said, pushing me back down. "If I let you get up, you'll get away."

She started kissing me again. I wasn't really into it but I didn't have the heart to make her stop. She was right about what she'd said earlier, it _had_ been a while and I didn't feel like it was fair to hold out on her now that we were somewhere private. I undid her bra and made a half-hearted attempt to get myself going by cupping her breasts in my hands.

It didn't work. I was still feeling odd from that cave. As her hand crept under the hem of my knickers, I wondered if perhaps we'd disturbed a very sacred site and now we were subject to some sort of curse. Perhaps that's why the cave was a secret. But… no, that couldn't be right. I didn't feel _cursed_ , I just felt… watched. It was very disconcerting.

"Am I in the right place?" Sam asked me, snapping me back to reality. I realised she was talking about what she was up to in my knickers.

"Down a little bit," I told her, and she followed my instructions. It felt sort of good, I supposed, but I wasn't invested in it and the whole process seemed a bit mechanical and not very sexy.

So, if we were being watched, who were we being watched by? The spirits from the paintings in the cave? Were they all around us now? I opened my eyes as if that would give me some indication whether or not I was right. Around the hotel room, I couldn't see any sign anything was here other than us. When I closed them, again, though… The sensation was like being stuck in mud. My limbs felt as if they were dragging. I felt heavy.

Maybe I was just tired; we _had_ just done two days of very intense hiking.

Sam stopped what she was doing and sat up from me. "Is this doing _anything_ for you at all?" she asked.

I wasn't sure how to respond to that without hurting her feelings, so I just lay there and stared up at her.

It was answer enough for Sam. She sighed. "I guess I just lost my mojo or something today. I'm sorry. My arms are kind of dead from yesterday."

It made me feel less awful if she blamed herself for getting me nowhere, but I didn't want her to have that sitting on her shoulders. I shook my head. "It's okay, I'm a bit off for some reason. Let me try you."

I didn't need to suggest _that_ twice. We switched places and I pulled her knickers off and tossed them over toward our cases. She was _really_ wet and that made me feel guilty, as if I was lying to her. I lay down, half-beside her, half-on top of her, and set to work. My shoulders were sore from carrying the pack, and just keeping a steady rhythm for her was painful and difficult. I almost needed to use techniques I'd learnt in Yamatai to put the discomfort out of my mind while I was trying to concentrate on making Sam come. I forced myself to focus on her.

Before I'd started she'd been touching my face and her hand was still beside my cheek, limp and forgotten. It was sweet. I smiled at her, though she couldn't see it. Even covered in dust with bits of mud in her hair, Sam was beautiful. She deserved my full attention and I tried to give it to her.

She was just so vulnerable like this. It woke something in me – not what I wanted it to, but a feeling that I must protect her.

Suddenly, I had a vivid image of her sitting upright and staring at me, her eyes empty sockets like Himiko's had been. It was so shocking that I stopped for a second, inhaling sharply and feeling my heart race.

What on earth was _that?_

Sam mistook my movements for excitement and smiled a little. "Keep going…"

God, I almost couldn't. I hoped no shade of what I'd imagined was anything but in my exhausted brain. There couldn't be any connection between that cave and Yamatai, so that at least was comforting. I was probably just spooked from coming across another faintly magical place and it was waking up all of the things that had ever scared the life out of me.

Thinking about frights made me remember that girl we'd bumped into in Wollemi. She'd looked just so pale that any shock we'd given her should probably have tipped her over the edge and killed her. On that note, I winced. I hoped I wasn't thinking awful things about someone who had a real heart condition or terminal illness or something of that sort. Perhaps there was some legitimate reason she was so nasty to us. Or, maybe Sam was right and she was just a bitch.

"Lara."

I'd been completely out of it.

Sam managed to look only slightly frustrated, and there was a degree of amusement on her face. "Imagining someone else?" she joked, probably attempting to make me feel better.

I went bright red. "No," I lied. It hadn't been true, not in the way she'd meant it. "Shall I keep going?"

Sam narrowed her eyes at me but didn't push it. "If you don't mind."

She did eventually come, but it probably wasn't what she'd been hoping for. I was tired, sore and completely uncommitted to it. All I could think of was spirits and paintings and a mish-mash of images from hunting for the Scion fragments and Yamatai. To make matters worse, the wind was picking up outside and air pressure was dropping. Thunderstorms _still_ made me nervous.

I lay on the bed beside her. "Sorry."

She took one of my hands and brought the back of it to her lips, kissing it. "It did the trick, and it's not like I expected much after two days hiking. We can save the mind-blowing sex for a time when we're not both totally exhausted."

"Thanks, I feel a bit out of sorts," I confessed, "like something in that cave stayed with me. I'm wondering if I should be worried about it."

 _That_ sobered her. She turned her head toward me, looking concerned. "That place made me feel really weird," she said. "There's obviously a reason no one's allowed to know where it is. I'm glad we're getting even further away from it tomorrow."

That's right, I thought. We're off to the Gold Coast tomorrow. I actually felt a pang of regret; maybe some part of me had hoped to go back to the cave despite how it made us both feel. It seemed such a pity not to study it and try and learn the history of the location. I wanted to understand what made me feel like this, even if I was a little afraid of the answer.

Sam leaned up a little on one elbow, still topless. I wished I was in the right mood to appreciate it. "Do you think whatever you're feeling means we're in danger?"

I shook my head. "Nothing like that. I don't know if I'm imagining things because I'm just so deliriously tired or what."

She yawned, and I mirrored her. "Well, we should probably just sleep. If you feel this way in the morning we can Google DIY exorcisms. I'm sure YouTube will have something." There was a twinkle in her eye.

She pushed herself to stand, groaning about her tired muscles as she as she walked toward the bathroom, completely naked. It was such an awful shame I couldn't appreciate it anything more than aesthetically at that moment as she disappeared inside and claimed the first shower. She probably needed one more than I did, I figured, feeling guilty again.

While I waited for my turn, I lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling.

Several times, I nearly drifted off only to jerk awake at the sensation of suddenly falling. The last time, I was half-asleep and finally in a peaceful place when I became very aware of my backpack in the corner of the room. It was a feeling I couldn't ignore.

I sat up and looked at it. It lay innocuously against a wall, completely unaware of the fact it was giving me the creeps.

Pulling up my trousers and hauling myself off the bed, I approached it cautiously. Australia _was_ full of dangerous creatures, as Sam loved to remind me. Maybe subconsciously I'd seen something crawl into it and it was only when I was half asleep that I had access to that memory.

Touching it as little as I could, I undid the cover. Then, I took the bag by the base and roughly shook everything out of it away from it and jumped back.

As I stood there, I ran my eyes over the scattered contents and looked for anything that was moving, even going as far as taking Sam's axe and poking about in it. Still nothing. I exhaled, crossing my arms and staring at the mess. Maybe what I _really_ needed was some sleep and to stop being so bloody paranoid.

I didn't know why I was being so superstitious; all the magic I'd come across in my travels was accessible and just as tangible as real objects. Himiko, I could touch. The centaurs I could touch, and – I winced – Natla, I was certainly able to touch. I probably didn't need to be afraid of those paintings any more than I needed to be afraid of the Scion just because it radiated magic.

I saw Sam's reflection in the window as she emerged from the bathroom. She was looking at the chaos I'd created all over the floor. "Redecorating?" she asked innocently, and then went to get her pyjamas from underneath her pillow and slip them on.

"Just being paranoid again," I said, beginning the process of cramming everything back into my backpack. "Turns out there's no funnel-web spiders or tiger snakes in this."

Sam gave me a flat stare, and then looked at the bed. "Oh, my God," she said. "Now that you've reminded me, I'm not going to be able to sleep until we've checked the bed for spiders."

While she was executing a thorough inspection, I went for my shower.

I did actually manage to sleep that night, and not too badly, either.

I woke up the following morning well before Sam did, refreshed and not feeling quite as jumpy as I had the night beforehand. Something was still not right, but since nothing had happened to us overnight and I'd not even had any nightmares, I'd decided that whatever I felt wasn't anything to worry about.

After making a genuine attempt to go back to sleep, I got bored lying in bed and snuck out of it in search of the iPad. Part of how I'd convinced myself to stop worrying about the paintings was making a decision that the following morning I'd find someone who could interpret them.

I took a few photos of the pages of my journal and attached them in an email to Prof Chamberlain. He'd been around the industry for so long he'd probably made a few friends who were experts in Australian archaeology. As a result of that, I hoped he would be able to ask them to do a favour for me and tell me a little about the paintings I'd copied.

Since I was awake, I put on one of the bathrobes and went and sat on the armchair by the window. Outside, it was pouring with rain and what was visible of the sunrise behind the Sydney Opera House was a deep orange. In the distance I could occasionally see bolts of lightning; it was unsettling. I watched the storm for a few minutes, wondering if it were even safe to sit close to the window. I wasn't that happy about bad weather on our holiday, but at least it wasn't freezing bloody cold as well.

I looked down at the iPad in my lap. Sam had left Facebook signed in and part of me was tempted to go poke around Bree's page. Impulsively, I opened it and tapped through to her wall.

What I first noticed was that about half of the images she'd uploaded were of me. I was happy I hadn't known that when I met her, because that made her seem kind of disturbed when in reality she was completely harmless. Most of them were publicity shots for _Lara Croft: Tomb Raider_ , there were some good screencaps from it and also some paparazzi photos which I wasn't too happy about. One of them was of me looking absolutely exhausted with a coffee in a milkshake-sized cup. That had been the morning after we'd arrived back in England and I was extremely jetlagged, I recalled. The _Are-They Aren't-They_ photos had a whole album dedicated to them. There were of me and Sam doing various things like appearing together for interviews, going to the supermarket and arriving at the airport. All of them were, in my opinion, complete inconclusive.

The rest of her photos were of her, Min, and some other people I didn't recognise. There must have been a good twenty or thirty photos of the couple kissing, too. One photo, titled _PHWOOOARRR_ was of Min in a bikini. It seemed that underneath all her oversized clothes she _did_ actually have breasts. I felt strange about looking at that photo, so I closed the albums all together.

I found the thread Sam had read to me yesterday, and scrolled down it. Like Sam had said, most of the posters were just fighting with each other, but there was a common theme of people wanting to claim me as a lesbian role model. It was just so bizarre. People didn't aspire to grow up and be world class lesbians, why would they need a lesbian role model? Why don't they choose famous surgeons, or Nobel Peace Prize winners, or even athletes and then just also sleep with whoever they want? Maybe the label 'lesbian' was true; honestly, I didn't know. But if it was, I wished people would be interested in the fact I was an archaeologist half as much as they cared about if I slept with girls.

While I was reading it, I spotted Sam's pseudonym near the bottom. I hadn't remembered her saying she'd commented. I tapped 'read more' and had a look at it.

" _Hi guys, maybe it's worth considering that even if Lara Croft was gay that it might be new for her. She might not feel totally comfortable talking about it or even being public about it just yet. You're all forgetting that the public figure you're discussing isn't a character, she's an actual person. Even if she's not gay, she's newly famous and that's got to be difficult for her. Given that, maybe stop saying mean stuff about her being homophobic for not making public statements in support of gay rights."_

Just reading Sam defending my honour made me smile. I checked the timestamp, she'd written it last night while I was in the shower. It was reassuring to know that she'd obviously thought about what I'd said to her. I hoped this meant that the whole touching in public thing would stop being an issue for us.

I looked over at her sleeping peacefully in bed. She was drooling all over the pillow.

I was about to click through to The Guardian when there was a knock on the door. It scared the living daylights out of me, probably because I was already a little on edge from whatever was lingering from the paintings. I put a hand to my chest and could feel my heart pounding against it as I stiffly got out of the armchair and went to answer the door. The soles of my feet were aching.

"What's going on…?" Sam asked, stretching as she turned over.

I shrugged, pulling the door open.

It was the manager. "I'm so sorry to be the bearer of bad news, Ms. Croft," he told me, looking very serious. "But your flight to the Gold Coast has been cancelled due to the bad weather and we've been unable to book you on any further flights as this week is Schoolies."

I looked across at Sam who looked uneasy. "So much for getting away from that cave," she said glumly.


	6. Chapter 6

Outside, the electrical storm continued.

Sam's silhouette against the window in the hotel's complimentary white dressing gown was chilling. I almost wanted to ask her to take it off; it was too familiar, all of it. I felt like pulling all the furniture up against the door and boarding up the windows. My fingers kept brushing over my thigh where my holster had been in Yamatai, as if I was looking for some kind of security blanket. I wasn't sure what my subconscious had thought I was going to be shooting at.

"How long do you think it will take them to get a car for us?" Sam asked, glancing at the clock. It was nine, but outside was so dark and ominous that it could easily have been midnight. She had the camera in her hands, and she turned it back out to the storm.

"That depends on what's stopping them."

Sam looked back at me, brow lowered over her eyes and one of her arms was tightly around her middle as she held the camera. She watched me for a moment and then turned back to the window. "I don't like this," she said. "And can you stop pacing? It's making me nervous."

I sat down on the bed.

She looked confused by what she'd said, and then a little guilty. "I'm sorry, that was kind of rude. I just don't feel right." After a minute or two, she made a noise and shook her head. "This is ridiculous," she said. "I'm going to get dressed and pack. I refuse to be trapped here, I want our holiday. Whatever it is can just leave us alone."

No sooner had she said that, the lights flickered. Beside her, the alarm clock was now flashing _00:00_. She angled the camera at it, and then at me.

I swallowed. "Okay," I said, ignoring our dialogue with whatever we'd brought back from the cave. "Let's pack."

The lights flickered again and when they came back on, so did the telly. It was just on the default news channel, though. Hearing the cheerful banter of the news presenters in their broad accents was actually comforting.

While Sam set about getting dressed and somehow fitting her ridiculous quantities of clothes back into her suitcase, I sat against the headboard of the bed. Something rang a little off about what was happening around us. I didn't feel good at all, but I'd slept well regardless. An insect creeping across the ceiling could almost wake me up these days, and I was still very sore from our hike. I should have slept terribly, but I didn't. That seemed like a significant detail.

I thought on it while I half-watched the telly. There was some interview on with an actress I didn't recognise and the hosts were struggling to get interesting conversation out of her. It was boring and easy for me to ignore while I tried to figure out what the importance of sleeping well was. In the end I gave up. It would be much easier if I could have a direct conversation with the presence in the same way I could with Natla. Even Himiko had had a voice.

Sam was sitting on her case in an attempt to get it flat enough for the zips to meet. "I need to eat more pizza," she said, bouncing on it and momentarily forgetting the supernatural presence.

"Please," I said, happy for the distraction. "You can't even have two slices without complaining about how much your stomach hurts."

"Well, that place near us in London had unusually large slices," Sam muttered, finally managing to get the zip threaded and the suitcase closed. It was only when she'd completely done it up and was standing looking at it that she realised her coat was still hanging over the side of the chair. She threw her hands up in defeat. "Whatever, I'm wearing it!" she announced, even though the weather was quite warm. "I don't care. My arms are killing me, I'm not opening that thing again."

Afterward, she took the hair straightener out of the front pocket of her case and disappeared into the bathroom. I almost wanted to follow her in there to make sure nothing happened, but I managed to stay put. Sam didn't need me circling nervously around her; she'd be fine. As odd as I felt, there was still no evidence we were in any actual danger.

While the boring interview continued on the telly, I leaned carefully over to the bedside table so as not to jar my muscles and picked up the iPad again. I Googled, ' _History of Wollemi'._ I had expected to find various links to papers about the Aboriginal cultures in the area, but the results were filled with information about the Wollemi Pine. It only grew in Wollemi National Park and the oldest fossil was two-hundred million years old. I wasn't normally at all interested in botany, but that was an impressively old fossil. The area must have been _ancient._

When I was following a trail of links, a notification appeared for Sam's Facebook. I clicked on it without thinking, and it lead to a chat with Bree.

' _Hey Sam,'_ she'd typed, _'Guess ur plane got cancelled hey?'_

' _It's Lara,_ ' I replied. My fingers hovered over the screen keypad. I decided not to mention what I thought had caused it, because even in Yamatai when my colleagues had been face to face with supernatural events they weren't even able to believe it. " _Yes, we're stuck here, it seems.'_

' _lol omg I'm not complaining,'_ she'd typed, and then the next line read, ' _brb need to ask min something.'_

While she was gone, I looked back up at the telly. The tedious interview had ended and there was actual news coverage, this time of some sort of protest. From the backdrop it was being held somewhere very remote. I'd missed the beginning, but the reporter was interviewing a man who looked like the most stereotypical Aussie surfer I'd ever seen, complete with shaggy hair and shark tooth necklace. Despite his appearance, he was reasonably eloquent. "It's absolutely critical that we protect this site from the profit-driven mega-corps," he said. "We don't get a second chance here, if we dig the Kimberley up, it's gone forever."

There were a few shots of some _amazing_ canyons and rivers. The cliffs ranged from bright orange to deep red and the water in the rivers was a rich emerald green. Just the contrast was very striking, let alone the odd shapes of the rocks. Down the bottom of the screen was text describing the location and I squinted at it, ' _The Kimberley, Western Australia_ '. I made a note of it so I could ask Sam if she'd planned for us to go there.

Bree came back. _'Hey don't freak out or anything but I asked min if we can drive u up to the Gold Coast n she said yes'._

I stared at the screen. There was no way we could accept it. We'd only just met the couple and according to Google Maps, it was a ten hour drive just to get there, making it a full two day round-trip for them. It made me uncomfortable that she'd even suggest it, and that was aside from whatever we'd led back here from the cave.

Sam had come up beside me and was reading over my shoulder. "Score!" she said. "Guess we _are_ getting out of here!" She went to take the iPad off me but I held it out of her reach.

"Sam, we can't do this," I told her.

She narrowed her eyes at me. "Look, I know she's got all those pictures of you, but it's totally nothing, I—"

"Yamatai, Sam." That shut her down. I let it hang in the air for a few seconds. "I'm not going to lead any more innocent people into the middle of my mess."

"I thought you said it didn't feel like we were in danger?" She was watching me uncertainly.

I gestured outside at the storm. "Do _you_ want to trust my gut feeling on that? Because I certainly don't."

Sam didn't even flinch. "Yes, I do," she said. "Trusting you's always worked out for me. How come you're the only one second-guessing yourself?" I didn't have an answer for that, and while I was trying to process what she'd said, she took the iPad from me. "If you say this thing is no danger, I believe you. Whatever, though, it creeps me out. I want to get away from it." She began to tap out a reply to Bree, saying, "And for the record, Lara, I thought we'd all agreed that Yamatai wasn't your fault."

I pulled it from her again before she could send it. "Sam, please wait. Let's just try and figure out what's going on before we get more people involved."

Sam gave up, pushing me over in the bed so she could climb up next to me.

We sat beside each other, leaning against the padded headboard. "So how are we going to do that?" she asked me.

I shook my head, I didn't know. "I sent an email to Professor Chamberlain, but it's nearly midnight in England. I don't know who else we could ask."

We both stared at the telly. The same news story was continuing, only this time they were interviewing a man and a woman who didn't look at all like protesters.

I was busy trying to decide if I thought it was too early to start ringing around universities in Sydney to looks for specialists in Aboriginal mythology, when Sam said, "Hey, you think they're brother and sister?"

I looked at her. " _What?"_

She nodded at the telly. "Those two people in suits. I was trying to figure out what was off about them and then I realised they're brother and sister."

God, she made me laugh. What wasn't to love about her? "Yes, that very question has been bothering me all morning," I said with gentle sarcasm. I pointed at her bedside table where her phone was. "Can you start calling around universities and see if you can find me a professor of Aboriginal studies? Even a PhD candidate would be better than nothing."

Sam blinked at me. "I don't actually know the difference between those two words," she said. "But okay, sure." She stood stiffly and collected her phone, wandering over near the window with it.

I unlocked the iPad again and entered the search string ' _Aboriginal curses_ ' into the Cambridge's database. I didn't think it actually _was_ a curse, but that was probably the best way to find the information I was after. Other than bone-pointing, which was common in a number of ancient cultures, I didn't find anything. I tried a few different phrases, trying to see if I could come up with anything that would get a hit. When that didn't work, I tried Google.

I did find a blog of someone else who'd come across Eagle's Reach on his hiking expedition a decade or so ago, though. I combed it for any sort of indication he was experiencing what we had, but there was nothing. His wife had recently had their second child and they looked very happy.

Why was this only happening to us, then?

Sam was still tapping away at her phone when it began to ring suddenly. She looked alarmed and nearly dropped it. Eyes wide, she glanced at me. "Private number," she said, and then put the phone to her ear. "Hello?"

My heart was pounding as I watched her, waiting for the reply.

She screwed up her face immediately, a big smiling growing across it. "Oh, my God, Bree," she said, laughing with relief. "I was so sure I was going to hear heavy breathing or some disembodied voice or something, don't even ask!"

I took a deep breath and let it out. Of course, Sam made her mobile number accessible to her Facebook friends and we hadn't replied to Bree's latest message. I watched Sam closely as she spoke.

"Listen, it's really nice of you to offer to drive us up there," Sam said, looking at me. I shook my head at her. Sam's expression pleaded with me.

"No, Sam," I whispered. "Just remember what happened to Pierre!"

Sam closed her eyes for a second. "…but we're going to have to decline. We're having some other issues that we kind of need to take care of right now."

I smiled appreciatively at her. She just looked away from me, and I felt guilty.

They chatted away for another minute or two, and during that I had put the iPad back on my lap and returned to trying to find answers. Just as I thought the conversation was winding up, Sam turned back to me. She looked guilty, herself. "You know what, Bree?" she said, in a tone that made me nervous. "I think we _will_ take you guys up on your offer."

I sat up straight. "Sam!"

"Yeah, I know, but what the hell, right?" she was saying to Bree. "You only live once. It could be heaps of fun." They made arrangements and then she hung up, wincing like she expected me to yell at her.

I just stared at her; I didn't even know where to start.

"This way it's not your fault if something happens, right? It's my fault," she tried to explain.

It was sweet, I supposed, but _horribly_ misguided. "Sam, if we bring them into this, it won't even be about whose fault it is. It will be about two innocent people who get hurt because of us. You never get past that, trust me."

Sam stood firm. "I do trust you, Lara. At least, I trust your gut feeling on this stuff." She took a step toward me. "You were fine before we went to bed…"

I didn't understand what she was implying, so I shook my head.

She looked like she was struggling with what she wanted to say. "How much of you thinking we're in danger is because of your thing about thunderstorms?"

I was a little taken aback at that. What she was implying was that my judgment was coloured by traumatic memories, and I didn't like that at all. It felt like an accusation that I was damaged, or completely mad, or otherwise incapable of making my own decisions. My immediate reaction was to deny it, but I bit my tongue.

Instead, I tried to consider that she might have a point. I focused on the awful unsettled feeling I had at the pit of my stomach. It was the same feeling I had if a stranger was standing too close behind me, even if they were just another shopper in a queue or passenger on the train. The storm outside _did_ worry me, but how much of that was because of Yamatai, I couldn't say. What I could say was that I'd slept well and nothing _had_ hurt us. This many hours into Yamatai I'd already seen dozens of people cut down in front of me and more dismembered limbs than most surgeons would see in their whole lives. This _was_ unsettling, but it was different.

"Perhaps you're right."

Sam smiled wryly. "I can't believe I just heard you say that," she said.

I gave her a look. "I'm not _that_ bad."

She shrugged. "I know, it's just sometimes nice to be told. You're right about there being _something_ weird, though. I still keep feeling like something's touching me. Bree and Min can't get here fast enough."

While we were waiting for them, we did try to call several universities. However, most of the staff were on summer holidays and we weren't actually able to find anyone to speak to us. I'd already given up by the time we took our luggage downstairs to wait in the valet circle for them. Prof Chamberlain would probably be more help than anyone else, I thought. I supposed we would just have to be patient and wait for him to reply.

The valet circle was sheltered, but the curb of it was still covered in deep puddles.

I went over to the desk to sign some paperwork while Sam minded our belongings, and on the way back Sam had her neck bent as she was fiddling with the settings on her camera. On impulse, I crept up behind her and ran my fingers down the back of her hairline.

She _shrieked,_ spun and saw me. "Oh, my _God_!" She was laughing. "You scared the hell out of me!" When she saw I was smiling, she positively _beamed._ For a moment I thought she was going to throw her arms around me and kiss me, but she managed to restrain herself. Instead, she reached out and took one of my hands. "You have no idea how awesome it is that you just joked about this," she said. "Seriously."

We stood smiling at each other for a few moments, but were interrupted by an old station-wagon honking a short distance from us. The sudden noise got my heart pounding again, even if I knew it wasn't going to hurt us. I wondered just how right Sam was about me: I honestly felt as if every little thing was a sign something terrible was about to happen.

As the car pulled up next to us, though, we had to leap out of the way to avoid being splashed as its wheels tore through the puddles. Close up, Min's car looked like it might give the Wollemi Pine a run for its money in the age stakes.

"Hi!" Bree called to us, leaning half out the window until Min finally stopped the car and she could get out. This time when she threw her arms around me for a quick hug, I wasn't as shocked and I managed to pat her back a few times while I looked sideways at Sam who was smirking at me.

"Just spray her nose with water if she tries to do that again," Min helpfully suggested from the other side of the car as she got out and came over to help us with the luggage.

Sam had the camera angled at us. "What, no hug for me?"

Even if she hadn't been joking, she had been clearly been expecting Bree to do the hugging. So when Min walked right up to her and comically wrapped her arms around Sam, Sam was as rigid as I must have been the first time Bree had done so to me. I quickly pried the camera from Sam and pointed it at them.

Min was pretending to cradle Sam, rocking her backwards and forwards and patting her back. Sam was laughing, but she was _beet_ red.

"Better?" Min said, and then released Sam.

It wasn't often Sam was lost for words, but she struggled to come up with a reply. She eventually settled on, "You'd better watch out. My girlfriend'll beat you up." She was grinning.

I crossed my arms sternly and gave Min a 'bring it' look with my eyebrows. Min threw her hands up. "I yield," she said. "One woman is enough trouble for me." She stepped back, gesturing at her car. "This is it. I'm afraid it's not exactly a plane, but it usually gets us from A to B."

"We're pretty keen to get to B," Sam said, picking her luggage up as Min opened the boot. "Or at least as far away from A as possible."

A peal of thunder shook the hotel.

Bree looked upwards toward the heavens and shook her hands dramatically at them. There was a concrete ceiling above us, but she still got her point across. "Yeah, what the fuck, Sydney? The one time Lara Croft comes here and it's basically the apocalypse." She insisted on taking my bags for me, even though she was so small that I couldn't believe her arms could support them. She did well enough, though, and when she couldn't lift my suitcase into the boot by herself, Min helped her.

"Thanks for this," I said to Min as she closed the boot. "I know you're not the fan of us your girlfriend is."

Min shrugged, grinning at me. "Well, you're lucky you're cute."

I just stared at her. I still couldn't get used to women flirting with me.

Bree smacked her lightly on the arm and said to me in just the manner Min had a moment ago, "Just spray her nose with water if she tries that again." They ended up with their arms around each other's hips.

I glanced at Sam to see what she'd made of the exchange. She looked smug, and looped her arm through mine somewhat possessively. "Let's get out of here," she said, leading me to the backseat of the car. "The sooner the better."

"I hear you," Bree said as we all climbed into the car. "Next stop: sunshine!"

I was fastening my seatbelt. Having a car full of cheerful people for a day or two would be a wonderful distraction from whatever we'd brought back from the caves, I thought.

I was listening to them chatting, when the car made the most _awful_ noise as Min turned the key. It sounded like a hacksaw being held up against a metal railing. She held her hands up away from the key, hurriedly saying, "Okay, okay, I get it!"

We all sat there for a moment.

"Shit," Min said, and then turned to Bree. "Is your brother awake?"

Bree shrugged, taking out her phone. "I'll try him."

Min turned back towards us. "Sorry, it does this, sometimes. Bree's brother's a mechanic, he always tells us what to do."

Sam and I looked at each other. I felt sick. There was no way this was _not_ related to whatever was haunting us.

We all got out of the car again while Bree tried a few phone numbers. Sam and I milled around on the curb. One of the concierge came to ask us if we'd like him to call a roadside assistance service, but I shook my head and politely shooed him away.

Sam came up behind me and rested her chin on my shoulder, one arm loosely around my waist and the other holding her camera beside me. Her touch was comforting, and she was clearly being careful to make sure it wasn't inappropriate.

"Well," she murmured. "If it wanted us dead, it would have done that while we were going a hundred on the highway."

I winced. "There is that." I looked over at the others. "I feel like we should tell them."

Sam shrugged. "I wouldn't believe you." She quickly corrected herself. "I mean, if I didn't know you and know that I can trust you, I wouldn't."

"What do we do, though? It clearly doesn't want us to leave Sydney, but that's exactly what we want to do."

Sam looked serious. "I get why this kind of scares you, though. ' _No one leaves_ '," she finished in Japanese. It was what Himiko had said before the plane fell out of the sky on top of me.

Before we could talk further about what we should do, Min wandered over to us while Bree was busy with her phone. She had her hands in the pockets of her baggy jeans and didn't look at all concerned about the noise the car had just made.

"Did you say it's done this before?" I asked her, wondering if that's why she looked so relaxed.

She shrugged. "Yeah, pretty often. You'd think I'd have learned how to fix it myself by now. I'm a bad lesbian."

Sam and I must have looked quite worried, because Min looked between us. "It's really no big deal," she said. "I'd expect you guys to be frustrated or something, but you two look like you've just seen a ghost. My car isn't going to explode and take out the city, I promise."

That made me grin. While Bree was busy trying to convince her mum to wake up her brother, Min was standing near us and making impossible for us to continue our conversation about what we should do about what was happening.

She'd already had plenty of opportunity to get used to Sam and her camera on the day they escorted us around the city, but the way she kept glancing at it indicated she was still a little uncomfortable.

Rather than just all stand there awkwardly, I asked Min what they'd been up to for the weekend. She shrugged. "On Saturday I played Call of Duty for eleven hours, and on Sunday I felt guilty about Saturday so I weeded the garden and now the backs of my legs hurt," she said. "Fascinating, right? Such a thrilling life I lead. What did you guys do? Did you end up going and seeing something in the Opera House?"

I shook my head. "We went hiking."

Sam chimed in with, "Your country is like hard mode, I swear." She patted the pocket of her jacket. "Thank God for Codeine, that's all I'm saying. Otherwise Lara would have had to carry me back from the caves we went to visit. Also I'd still be in bed crying right now."

Something dawned on Min. "Caves? Oh, yeah, you're an archaeologist," she said. "Paintings, right? I had to do a unit on Aboriginal art last year. Pretty interesting stuff."

Sam and I glanced at each other. She had been idly filming our conversation, but _that_ made her look down at the LCD to make sure Min was properly in frame.

"You studied Aboriginal art?" I asked Min.

She narrowed her eyes at me, mistaking my interest for disbelief. "Yes," she said slowly. "They actually teach you things in fine art majors, you know." It sounded like a position she'd defended before.

"Hang on a second," I told her, and then rushed over and opened the boot of Min's car, rummaging through my bags until I found the journal. I leafed through it until I opened the page with the copied paintings on it and handed it to Min. "Can you tell me anything about this?"

She looked from me to the pencil-sketches of paintings, but didn't comment on my request despite how oddly timed it was. As she ran her eyes up and down the pages, she explained some elements. "Well, there's mostly just narrative here… this is a man hunting an emu, this one's the Eagle Ancestor… These lines here usually mean water…" She got to the bottom of the second page and winced. "Yeah," she said. "Only certain people in Aboriginal tribes are allowed to use concentric circles. I'd get in big trouble if I'd have handed something like this in to my professor."

"What do you mean?"

She showed me the design she was talking about; it was the painting I didn't recognise and I was hoping someone would identify. The body of it was made up of entirely concentric spirals, but some of them were touching and it looked like it was one continuous line from one side of the sketch to the other. "This," she said. "That's kind of a sacred shape. Circles like this symbolize," she pointed downwards from her bellybutton, "and the unbroken line is supposed to symbolize to the Rainbow Serpent."

Like my dream, I thought. I looked down at it and remembered all those eyes staring at me from the wall of the cave. I felt like suddenly they were all on me now; the hairs on my skin all stood on end.

My journal had been in the hiking pack I'd turned inside out last night.

I wanted to get rid of this drawing as soon as possible.

"How do I destroy it?" I asked her. She was clearly confused so I added, "In a respectful way."

Min gave me the oddest look. "Uh, it's on paper and I promise I won't tell anyone I saw you do it."

When Sam angled the camera down at the page to see what we were looking out, the camera cut out again. She swore, angling it away and quickly trying to turn it off and on again so she didn't miss any of our conversation.

I looked out on the street; the rain was falling so heavily that torrents of water were flowing downhill. Sam saying 'no one leaves' earlier had put that awful memory of the plane falling out of the sky on top of me at the front of my mind, and I imagined lightening striking the hotel and it all falling in on us. I looked around for somewhere we could shelter from most of the debris if that were to happen.

"What are you going to do with it?" Sam breathed next to me, staring at the page.

Hopefully something that wasn't going to get me killed. "Stay here," I told the other two, and then ignored my sore muscles and jogged out onto the street in the rain. If anything was going to happen to me, it was going to happen to me without hurting them. I'd need to be quick, though, or Sam would come running after me.

I looked down at the copy of the painting. All those lines made it almost like an optical illusion; it swirled as I ran my eyes over it. It was beautiful, in its own way. I understood why it was sacred.

Regardless of that, though, it was scaring me. Somehow, this tiny picture was causing all this chaos around us. I needed to destroy it.

Hoping I wasn't about to turn a presence that didn't want to hurt us into one that did, I took the page in both hands, drew a deep breath, and tore all the way through it.


	7. Chapter 7

I stared at the two pieces of the page, each with half of the sacred design on them.

For just a moment I thought perhaps I had been wrong and there was nothing special about this picture at all – and then I felt a tide of water hammer against my face and body. The force of it and my surprise meant I fell back against the wall of the hotel, gasping and trying to cover my face. I expected to feel myself tumbling, rolling over riverbeds before I shot straight off the edge of a waterfall into thin air…

But then it stopped.

I stood up, stunned. Was that it?

I thought I could hear the others shouting but as the water cleared my ears, I realised they were _laughing._ I gaped at them.

As I was trying to figure out what had happened, a car tore along the curb through the puddles and splashed me with another wall of water.

I swore, gathering myself and jogging a bit up the path to where my journal had been washed to. I collected it; it would be completely ruined. There was nothing I didn't have digital copies of, but it was still a shame. I liked how real books felt. Looking down at the slippery leather, I stood in place for a moment, trying to figure out if the presence was gone. I was too disoriented to be able to tell.

I walked back to the others in a complete daze. Sam was laughing so hard she was _crying_ , and she had the camera pointed at me. "Oh, my God, Lara… oh, my God… You can't _stage_ scenes like that!"

Min was shaking her head at me. "That was weird," she said. "Fucking hilarious, but weird."

Bree hadn't seen any of it because she had her blond curls and half her torso underneath the bonnet. She was shouting at whoever was on the other end of the phone.

I didn't know what to make about any of it. I _was_ glad I hadn't been struck by lightning or hit by another falling plane, but I couldn't help but feel like the splash of water was rather mocking. I had expected to have the presence disappear or maybe even to invoke its wrath, but I hadn't expected to be _mocked_.

Sam had rewound the footage and was holding the camera where I could see the LCD. "Watch this!" she said, and showed me getting absolutely pummelled with water by a passing lorry. After we re-watched my reaction to that, she started laughing again. When she saw the expression I now had, though, she looked a little guilty. "I'd hug you," she said, "but you're all wet."

I gave her a flat stare. "Oh, really?"

When I took Sam's camera from her, she was so surprised that she let me. I gave it and the ruined journal to Min. "Hold these," I said neutrally, and pressed the record button for her. Min obediently followed my instructions. I could see Sam's pockets had nothing in them.

Without giving Sam any sort of warning, I hoisted her up and slung her over my shoulder, walking straight out into the rain and over to the curb. She shrieked, realising what I was planning to do with her. "No, Lara!" she made a half-hearted attempted to escape, laughing and pleading, "I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I take it all back, there was nothing funny about it at all! No—!"

Careful not to let her fall too heavily on the footpath, I dropped her square on her back into a deep puddle. Standing over her, I grinned triumphantly.

She lay in the water for a second, just laughing. "I can't believe you just did that!"

I held my arm out to her and helped her to stand up. She flicked her wrists, as if that did anything at all about the fact her jeans and her blouse were now sopping. Brushing some of her hair out of her eyes, I gestured at her clothes. "There, now we're both wet. About that hug…?"

She did stop laughing to hug me briefly, and then pulled back a second later. God, her expression. I knew she loved it when I 'stopped being so serious' in her words and messed about with her but, boy, could I see it on her face at that moment. She would have let me do anything to her. She didn't try to kiss me, though, even though I could see she wanted to.

Since my hand was already on her shoulder, I brushed my thumb along her cheek and then dropped my hand to hers, leading her back under cover.

"We'll change before we get in your car," I said to Min. "Then we can all spend twenty minutes helping Sam get her suitcase shut again."

Min hardly knew what to think of us. In the end she just shook her head, handing the camera back to Sam. Then she looked apprehensively at me as she gave me back my journal. "You scare the hell out of me."

I looked quizzically at her as I took it.

"You come across as quiet and polite and maybe a bit shy, but then with a completely straight face you do stuff like that," she gestured out towards the rain and the puddles.

"I can't fucking do it, Min!" Bree yelled, dropping the hood shut with a thump and then marching over to us. "Apparently the starter gear is grinding against the flywheel and we need a mechanic to…" She stopped speaking as she noticed Sam and I were soaking wet.

She stared.

"Don't start on the wet jokes," Min warned her, smiling.

Sam showed Bree the footage and she looked quite disappointed to have missed out. She looked wistfully at the heavy rain on the street and then back at Min. "Can we—"

"Nope," Min interrupted her in a smooth voice and then turned back to us. "So, what are we going to do now, then? I think Bree said something about you having trouble getting a hire car, too."

"Maybe we should try it one last time," I said, thinking that just maybe tearing the design in half would have done the trick. It wasn't raining any less and I didn't feel any different, but it seemed as if it was worth a shot.

Min and Bree looked at each other, and then Bree shrugged and gave Min back the keys. Min hopped in the front seat of the car, but she must not have had very high hopes because she left the driver's side door open. After a few seconds of silence, the engine started. It didn't exactly sound healthy, but at least it wasn't making that grating hack-saw sound.

Bree looked at me with what I can only describe as total adoration. "You're a car-whisperer," she said. "You know that's like a lesbian superpower, right?"

Sam snorted. "You hear that, Sweetie? We'll have to get you a cape."

Min leaned across the passenger seat and wound down the window. "Get in," she said. "You can change at the next servo. I'm not risking turning it off again."

Sam and I had spent half of yesterday soaked from traversing the river, and it looked like we were going to spent half the following day soaked as well. Min had already filled the car up with petrol before coming to pick us up and it was going to be hours before we stopped again.

As soon as we took off and Bree was busy fiddling with the radio to find something worth listening to, Sam shuffled up to me in the back seat. "Did it work?" she asked quietly.

I shrugged. "I have no idea," I said. "Can you…?"

Sam thought for a moment and shook her head. "I can't tell. I thought it would be, you know, obvious. Like suddenly having a huge weight lifted."

Something occurred to me. "Give me your camera." She handed it to me and I turned it on, angling it at the journal as I very gingerly peeled the wet pages apart. I found the page with the copied designs on it and opened it across my lap with the camera facing at it. Sam was leaning over me, looking hopefully at the screen.

The words ' _card write error'_ appeared on the LCD.

We both sat back against the seat, looking at each other. Sam took my hand.

Min glanced at us in the rear-vision mirror. "What are you two up to back there?"

"Witchcraft," said Sam. I actually think she was being serious, but both Bree and Min laughed.

Bree twisted around in the passenger seat. "What kind of music d'you guys like listening to?" She indicated the radio.

"I'm not sure I feel like music right now," I said honestly. I looked out the window. Min was merging onto a freeway and we were travelling quite fast; I kept waiting for something to happen to the car. Sam saw where I was looking and we shared a glance again. I couldn't hold it any longer. "Listen," I said to the other girls, "Someone once told me that people who hang around me have a very low survival rate."

Bree was still facing us. She gave me a very odd look, but seemed interested in what I was saying anyway. "That's a bit random," she observed.

"What if I told you that you might be in quite a lot of danger right now?"

Min's eyes were smiling in the rear-vision. "I'd say it's always the quiet ones that turn out to be serial killers."

"She's not a serial killer," Sam said, ignoring the fact that technically I was.

Bree was intent on me. "You mean like with Natla? Is someone trying to kill you again?"

Hearing that name was a shock. "No!" I said. " _That's_ fortunately over. No, as far as I know no one's trying to kill me. I just…" I shrugged. "I don't know how to explain it. I just wanted to warn you."

Min's eyes were narrowed. She looked more confused than anything else. "Uh, thanks…?" She shook her head and looked back at the road. "What do you even say when someone says that to you?"

Bree shrugged and returned to face the front. "Nothing's going to happen to us," she said casually.

"What makes you so sure?" Sam asked her.

"Because we're the good guys," she said, reclining comfortably in her seat and putting her feet up on the dash. "It's like the law of the world."

Sam looked at me. The law of the world hadn't helped Roth, or Alex, or Steph, or Grim… or any of the dozens of other crew members on the Endurance. It hadn't helped my parents and it hadn't helped Larson. Then again, Bree was so confident and so sure she was right that I didn't have the heart to remind her of the 'good guys' we'd lost.

Min was watching us carefully, but when I looked at the mirror she looked away.

As we left Sydney, Sam undid her seatbelt and lay across the backseat with her head in my lap. When I mentioned it would be safer with it on, she just grinned at me. "I like to live on the edge," she said, and then added, "I love how you're happy to parade me in front of gunmen but when I don't wear a seat-belt it's an enormous no-no."

Well, I wasn't _happy_ to parade her in front of gunmen. "Being happy and being aware that I can't stop you following me aren't the same thing," I said, idly playing with her damp hair.

"I hear you," Min said from the front seat.

Bree lightly smacked her and then put her hands behind her head. "So you guys wanna play driving games or something? Like, who can come up with the funniest phrases out of the letters on other cars' numberplates?"

None of us were really that enthusiastic about it, but Bree spent the next twenty minutes talking to herself in the front seat while she played it. There was something eerie about listening to her happily chattering on while I waited for something awful to happen to us.

It never did, though. In fact, the only thing that went wrong at all was that Min's GPS directed us to the wrong turn-off and added half an hour to our trip.

Bree checked the settings on it. "Hah," she said. "You put 'Gold Coast' in here and there's a 'Gold Coast' in Western Australia, too. We were just about to drive across the whole of Australia."

Night was falling by the time the trees along the side of the highway had all turned into palms. We'd long since left the storm behind and not having thunder periodically rumbling overhead _did_ make me feel better.

It was too dark for me to see too much of the landscape. Despite the fact it was dark, though, the beaches were so white that when we were driving alongside them I could see how flat the sand was. It had been quite some time since I'd been somewhere tropical, and even though I didn't share Sam's passion for the beach, it did look rather inviting.

That was until we got closer into town and I saw just how many people were still on the beach.

Min wound down the window and a current of warm air rushed into the car. "Welcome to Surfer's Paradise," she said.

As we drove into the streets around the foreshore, there were people _everywhere._ Even Tokyo during peak hour wasn't this bad, and at least in Tokyo all the pedestrians were careful to not get in the way of traffic. These people, on the other hand, freely ran into oncoming cars. They were also all young, wearing glow-bands around their necks and wrists and all clutching various bottles of alcohol.

We screeched to a stop and Min pounded the horn, leaning out the window and yelling a tirade of abuse at the teenager she'd nearly run over. She wound up the window and glanced back at us, saying in a pleasant voice, "Sorry about that. Fucking idiots don't know what the red man means."

No sooner had she done that, the teenager threw something at the car. It bounced off the bonnet and clattered across the road. From the sound of it, it was an empty bottle.

"He just threw a bottle at your car," Bree said, and made as if she was going to get out of the car and go after him.

Since I was behind her, I leaned forwards and took her arm. "No, Bree, just leave it."

She looked surprised that I'd stopped her. "But he threw something at us!" she said, looking indignant. "That's not okay!"

Min gave me an appreciative glance, and then put a hand on Bree's thigh. "It's fine, my car's so beaten up that one dent in the bonnet won't make a difference."

Bree looked as if she might ignore us and run after the man anyway, but changed her mind and sat sullenly back in the seat as we drove slowly along the road.

As we continued along the main drag, people banged on the windows and, memorably, one woman pulled up her top and pressed her tiny breasts against the glass. It was like one enormous street festival.

"I think we're gate-crashing a party," I observed, locking the door of the car.

Bree, on the other hand, wound down the window. "Nah, it's just Schoolies," she said. "All the year twelves have finished their exams and they just fly up here to chill out on the beaches afterwards."

Sam had the camera pointed out the window. "Neat," she said. "The hotel's just off the street up here."

The hotel Sam had chosen was actually serviced apartments which fronted onto the Surfer's Paradise beach. That suited as well, because no one was going to ask questions about why there were four people headed upstairs when two had booked.

Min helped us carry the luggage up, and then said politely in the doorway, "I guess we'd better find somewhere to crash for the night."

"Don't be ridiculous," I told her. "You're welcome to sleep here."

Sam was showing Min where to put her suitcase. "Yeah, it's like the least we can do after you drove us for ten hours. Maybe we can get some alcohol and make a night of it or something."

Min _did_ look exhausted. "Thanks," she said. "And alcohol sounds great."

Sam and I volunteered to go downstairs and find somewhere that was open. Min had given me her car keys just in case, but we were so close to the main street that I couldn't believe there wouldn't be a supermarket and a liquor store somewhere along it.

On the way down, all the walls of the lift were all mirrors. Looking at a hundred copies of myself stretching into eternity was more unnerving that it usually would be. Sam slung the hand that wasn't holding the camera around my waist and tilted her head against mine. "Look how cute we are together," she said, filming it.

I considered our reflection. Sam certainly looked very cute, but I wasn't sure what my hair was doing. It had dried in a really strange angle, and seeing a hundred copies of my fringe poking in all directions was on some level quite funny. While I was looking at us I had a brief, frightening moment where I felt like I wasn't myself. Where I was staring at clones of myself and none of them was me.

Sam must have noticed my expression. "Hey, Sweetie, are you okay?"

"I don't think it's gone," I said. I felt like if I looked away from my reflection, it might do something it shouldn't. "God, what on earth does it want from us?"

She narrowed her eyes for a second. "That thing from the painting?" I nodded. "I don't feel anything like I did," she said. "Are you sure?"

My reflection stared back at me and copied me as I said, "No. I just don't feel right."

Sam hugged me. "Maybe it's because you know I'm about to take you out into a street full of partying schoolkids."

As the lift dinged and the doors slid open, she took me by the hand and led me out of the lobby and out onto the footpath. There _were_ a lot of people. Most of them were visibly teenagers who obviously were here with their friends to celebrate exams being over, but there was a discouraging number of mid-aged men and other people who looked out of place. It was dark, though, so at least I didn't have to contend with a crowd who was likely to recognise me.

There wasn't any way to really navigate them without bumping people and needing to push through. The whole street was very claustrophobic for me, and the liquor store wasn't really much better. The queue to purchase alcohol was about thirty people long.

When we were paying for the alcohol, the clerk asked for my ID. His co-worker happened to look over and said loudly, "That's Lara Croft!" He looked apologetically at me as he scanned our bottles. "Sorry, Miss Croft."

I smiled politely at him, but glanced over my shoulder. The entire queue had fallen silent and were now staring at me as they whispered to each other. The only way I could get out of the liquor store was by completing a gauntlet of autographs. One girl, who happily told me she was seventeen, unbuttoned her blouse and pushed her breasts together. "I don't have any paper!" she announced, and handed me her lipstick.

"Thanks, I needed a top-up," I said, and then pretended to put it on my lips. Everyone laughed and there were a few cheers, but I felt sick. Sam eventually managed to help me escape by pointing out we had alcohol we needed to take back to people.

When we finally got back to the serviced apartments, I leaned against the wall of the lift, refusing to look at my reflection.

Sam touched my arm.

I chuckled humourlessly. "Maybe I should just cut all my hair off," I said. "At least then no one would recognise me."

Sam made a noise. "You going to go all Britney on me now? At least it's too late for a hairdresser to be open so you can't do anything impulsive."

That did actually make me laugh. "I don't need a hairdresser," I told her, half-seriously. "I have a pocket knife in my backpack."

Back in the apartment, Bree was channel-surfing while Min had laid herself up on the couch with an arm over her eyes. Her feet were up on the armrest, and since her shoes were off, I noticed she had odd socks on. She did look up as we entered. "Beer," she said, as if she was in the middle of the desert asking for water. "And what took you so long?" she didn't sound like she was nagging.

"There's hordes of people out there," I said. "And a good number of them wanted my autograph. How long is this going to last, anyway?"

Min shrugged. "Bree was at Schoolies for two weeks last year. I think it's only just started."

I didn't like the sound of that. Sam and I shared at look as I twisted the cap off one and handed it to Min. "It's not cold," I said.

Bree watched me. "You just did that with your hands! Doesn't that _hurt?_ " She clenched one of her own fists as if she was having sympathy pains.

Sam answered for me as she took the bottles out and put them all on the table. "She was a barmaid in her past life. She does that whole cocktail-making thing, too. It's like watching performance art." She sounded like she was enjoying boasting about me. It was sweet.

"That's _so_ _cool_ ," Bree said, wandering over to see what else we'd bought. "Can you show us?"

I smiled. "We didn't buy the right components," I told her. "Another time."

It was only when we were all sitting on the couches in front of the telly that we realised the only good channels were pay per view.

Min looked down at Bree who was lying between her legs with her head against Min's chest. "You sure you want to come back here?" she asked her. "All the classy hotels let you watch movies for free."

"As if we'll be watching TV," Bree said. "You're supposed to fuck all night."

Min laughed at my expression. "She was threatening to drag me back here for our honeymoon," she explained to us.

"You're getting married?" Sam asked, sounding a little incredulous. I tended to agree with her. "Don't you think you're kind of young?"

Bree looked completely serious. "No," she said. "Besides, we've been together for years, it's not like we're just going to suddenly break up."

Sam lifted her head from my shoulder. "Years…" she said, frowning. "Min, if you don't mind me asking, how old are you?"

Min winced. "Nearly twenty-eight. It's not how it sounds."

Bree smirked. "It is how it sounds. But I lied to her about how old I was for a year so it's kind of not her fault." She took Min's beer out of her hand and had a mouthful of it before handing it back to her. "We can't get married yet anyway, because it's not legal here and we're too pov to afford plane tickets to somewhere else. _Someone_ chucked away their high-paying job to go to art school." She elbowed that someone in the stomach.

Min finished off her beer. "Your idea," she said. "Your fault. I'd be a middle-manager in a huge mining company by now and driving you around in a Porsche."

"And miserable," Bree said, taking Min's hand and looking up over her forehead at her. "You're less boring when you're happy."

Sam snorted. "Wait, let me get some popcorn. This is better than a movie."

"Yeah, yeah, it's all fun and games until I get arrested for carnal knowledge," Min said. "I didn't touch her until she turned eighteen this year. That's my story and I'm sticking to it." She looked over at us. "What about you two? You've known each other for years, right?"

"Since boarding school," I said. "But we weren't together until a couple of months ago."

"Three months," Sam said, correcting me. "Actually as of two days from now you'll be my longest relationship ever."

"You can celebrate by breaking up with Lara so she can date me," Bree said, giggling. "Just kidding. I think my head would explode if she took her top off or—"

Min put her hand completely over Bree's mouth. "She was finished with that sentence," she said casually. "Carry on."

I watched them playfully bicker with each other and reflected how very different the two of them were. I looked at Sam. Sam and I weren't so different, really. We had a different outlook and different things we were passionate about, but otherwise in many ways we were very compatible. It was so heartening that two so very different people as Min and Bree could make their relationship work. It made me feel better about the things that were off between Sam and I. I hugged Sam closer to me, and when she looked up at me, I smiled.

We ended up watching some B-grade action-adventure set in Africa. It was made in the nineties and both the acting and the special effects were terrible. So, naturally, Sam _loved_ it. Every now and then she would interject with some commentary about the direction and at one point she jumped up off me and rushed over to the TV and pointed at the corner of the screen. "Look!" she said, "You can see the boom mic!"

It was just so _normal._ Just sitting and watching some terrible telly with friends and drinking. We'd done this a thousand times during uni and it reminded me of when Alex and the rest of the gang used to all come over after our classes. My flat had been the closest to the campus and the unofficial hub where everyone invited themselves on Friday nights. At the time, I'd hated it because I'd wanted to catch up on study. Now, I missed it. I didn't really realise until just then how little socialising Sam and I had done since Yamatai.

Sitting here, laughing and chatting, it felt almost as if Yamatai and Atlantis might never have happened. I looked across the room at where I'd stood my journal to dry. As much as I wanted that presence to leave us alone… I did, and I didn't. I wasn't sure if I was more scared of whatever it was or more scared how much I could see myself wanting to investigate what it wanted from us.

This wasn't like the Scion fragments, though. No one was in danger, there was nothing at stake. Sam and I were just on holiday and I should probably leave it alone and enjoy myself. It didn't feel as strong here, anyway. I wasn't sure I could feel it at all.

When the movie was over and we all agreed it was time to call it a night, Min and Bree were happy enough to sleep on the couches. That was a relief because I was still sore from hiking.

I'd forgotten to draw the blinds before we went to bed, so when the sun rose at six in the morning it woke me up. Sam was still snoring gently beside me, dead to the world. I quietly slipped out of bed and padded out onto the balcony so I didn't disturb her.

It was a shock to find Min out there, leaning on the railing in her pyjamas with her normally perfectly-sculpted hair in tufts everywhere.

"What are you doing up?" I whispered as I very gently slid the balcony door closed.

She glanced back at me. "I'm a morning person," she said. "I was just trying to decide if it's too early to go for a swim."

I walked up to the railing beside her and looked down onto the beach. The sand was covered with a mixture of drunk couples passed out all over each other, sleeping teenagers in various states of undress and regular swimmers stepping around the bodies to get to the water.

The sand _did_ look beautiful and the water _was_ absolutely crystal clear, but I wasn't in the mood to deal with all those people. "I think I'll give it a miss," I said. "Unless you can direct me to a beach that doesn't have people on it."

She grinned. "On the east coast?" she said, "I don't like your chances. You need to go to Western Australia for pristine beaches with absolutely no people."

I smiled wryly. "Maybe I should speak to Sam about changing the location of her tropical getaway to somewhere where we actually _can_ get away."

"Broome's nice," Min suggested. "When the mining companies aren't booking out the hotels, that is."

Talking about Western Australia reminded me of the note I'd made when I was watching the news the morning beforehand. "Be back in a second," I said and snuck inside, took my phone off the bedside table and went back out to Min. I tabbed through my notepad, and then read, "' _The Kimberley, Western Australia_ '.I saw some pictures of this place and thought it looked beautiful. Are there beaches near there?"

Min raised her eyebrows. "Wow, that's actually where Broome is," she said. "Great minds think alike, apparently." She flashed me a charming smile, but I was too stunned to appreciate it.

I stared at her for a moment, reminded of when Sam and I had been thinking the same thing about the Blue Mountains and how they felt frozen in time.

At that second, my phone vibrated. I looked down on it; I'd got a new email. When I opened it, it was from Prof Chamberlain and it was another wall of text. I wasn't even going to look at it at all just then because it would be rude, except the words, 't _he Kimberley'_ jumped out of the text at me.

I couldn't ignore what was happening. This wasn't just some big coincidence.

I turned my back to the railing, thinking. I had been right in that the presence _wasn't_ gone, but at least it didn't appear to be trying to hurt us. For whatever reason, though, it seemed determined that we would end up in the Kimberley. I was too distracted to read any of Prof Chamberlain's email, and I completely forgot that Min was standing next to me until she said, "Lara, what's going on?" She had been reading the email over my shoulder, and I knew what Prof Chamberlain was like about the occult so his email had probably been full of references to it.

I looked at her. She was watching me very carefully, and after a few seconds she said, "Are we _actually_ in danger like you said?"

I made a face. "I don't think so." I paused. "I do think Sam and I need to go to Broome."

She nodded in acknowledgement. Unlike Sam, she seemed comfortable enough to let a long silence stretch between us without talking or fidgeting. I was so used to Sam's company that hers was actually strange. As I pushed off the railing to go back inside, she stopped me.

"Lara," she said. "The only way your behaviour makes sense is if you actually believe crazy shit will happen to you. And as far as I can see, you're not crazy." She took a breath. "All that crap Bree talks about with magical relics and centaurs. That's real, isn't it?"

I looked back at her and swallowed. There was no point in not telling her the truth. "Yes," I said.


	8. Chapter 8

"It sucks that we can't come, too," Bree said, standing at the kitchenette counter and still inside her sleeping bag. "It would be so cool to come with you and see what actually happens when you do those movie-things."

Sam had just finished booking us flights and was seated at the table with the iPad, reading through the email Prof Chamberlain had sent me.

I was on the edge of the table beside Sam, but I couldn't sit still. I should have been worried, I really should have. On some level, I was. On another, it seemed like a much more distant prospect that the supernatural thing wanted to do us harm. Not having to worry that at any moment a plane might fall on me allowed me the opportunity to really be curious about what the thing wanted with us. Of course, it might all be a trap. I kept trying to remind myself of Larson and Pierre, as well as everyone who had died on Yamatai, especially Roth, Alex and Steph.

Bree had been crestfallen when Min had said they didn't have enough money to join us in Broome. Naturally Sam had offered to pay, but before she'd finished the sentence, Min had flatly refused her charity. Sam always looked so hurt when people wouldn't let her shower them with money. It was such a non-issue to her; she would never understand how hopeless it made people feel to need to be paid for.

To be honest, I was glad the couple couldn't come. It wasn't that I didn't enjoy their company – far from it – but needing to worry about the lives of two innocent people was a prospect I didn't relish. I had enough trouble coming to terms with the fact Sam's life was frequently in my hands, and Sam had well and truly proven she was an asset to our survival.

I had no idea what was waiting for us in Broome. It could be anything. I just had no idea what was there and I should be spending this time finding out. It could be like Yamatai, or it could be nothing at all. It was safer without them.

"Well," Sam said eventually, closing the email. "I think I just wasted fifteen minutes of my life." She paused. "I wonder who the student he forwarded the drawings to was. Do you think we would have met him in Peru?"

I shook my head. "He would have said so."

She exhaled. "I guess." She looked wistfully out the window at the seascape. "It's so sad we've just got here and now we have to leave."

I put a hand on her shoulder.

Min was leaning against the far wall. She hadn't said a single thing since Sam had woke up, except to ask Bree how she slept. "I'm getting dressed," Min announced, looking directly at Bree. Bree perked up and bunny-hopped in the sleeping bag off into the bedroom with Min.

"I'm sorry," I said to Sam quietly when the others were getting dressed in our bedroom. "I know you put a lot of work into planning this holiday and we're about to completely mess it up."

Sam looked at me as if I was crazy. "Are you actually apologizing to me for this, Lara?" She abandoned the iPad, standing up from the seat and putting her arms around my neck. She kissed my nose. " _You're_ the one who hates being spontaneous. I love this crap."

She had a big smile on her face, and it was infectious. "I know I should probably be scared," I said, resting my chin on her shoulder. "I should be. But I'm not." I took a breath. "I wouldn't say I'm excited, exactly, but… at that moment when I realised what was going on…"

"You were totally like, 'Oh, my God, this is so cool'?" She tried to imitate my accent.

I laughed. "Not even close, and I completely don't talk like that."

She rolled her eyes dramatically. "Sorry, I mean, 'Oh, gosh, that's absolutely brilliant, I am so thrilled to be presented with this unique opportunity…'"

"I don't talk like _that_ , either!" My smile faded a little. "I keep wondering if maybe I should be stepping back a bit, asking myself if I really want to walk into another Yamatai or meet another Natla."

Sam looked thoughtful. "We beat them," she pointed out.

I nodded. "I suppose that's why this cave-presence-thing has head-hunted us, if that's what's happened."

Sam winced. "Yeah, I would have maybe used a different word than 'head-hunted'," she said. Then she did an anime-style fist pump. "We'll do it," she said. "Whatever it wants. And it will be awesome, and it'll totally be a great sequel to Tomb Raider."

"If it will even let you film anything," I said. "It seems a bit camera-shy."

Sam scoffed. "If I can work with Whitman, I can work with this thing," she said, and then looked up. "Hey, you think it's watching us right now?"

I looked around automatically, as if I expected to see something. "Why?"

"Because—" she said, and then pulled me into a deep kiss.

It was at that very moment that Bree and Min emerged from the bedroom, and Bree stopped in the doorway, gaping at us. "Aww!" she said, "That's so cute!"

I pulled away from Sam, my cheeks burning. That unfortunately timing seemed proof enough that it _was_ watching us.

Min tapped the back of Bree's head. "Why don't you make it a little _more_ awkward for them and take a few photos?"

She was joking, but Bree looked like she was seriously considering the prospect. In the end she decided not to. "You know, on the first day I wasn't sure if I seriously believed you about being a couple. You're obviously best mates and all that, but you _never_ touch. I mean, you hug and stuff but it's not the same. I thought the whole maybe-lesbian thing might be for publicity. You know, like Tatu."

Sam pulled back and gave me a look that said, _see?_ I narrowed my eyes at her as I said to Bree, "Being a celebrity makes things complicated."

Bree didn't look convinced, wandering over to the kitchenette and helping herself to a glass of water. She was only wearing a string bikini top and a skirt that was short enough to show the matching bikini bottoms. "I think you should just pash on camera," Bree said. "Everything's so much easier when you don't have to constantly be worrying who's looking." Looking at that skirt, I had a feeling Bree had never cared about who was looking and what they were thinking. "Trust me."

"Says someone who's never been _in_ the closet," Min muttered from the bedroom doorway, where she was leaning.

Bree drank deeply from the glass and then discarded it. "So what time are your flights?"

"Noon," Sam told her. "From Brisbane."

"We'll take a taxi," I said quickly, not wanting to impose ourselves too much on Min's generosity.

Min shook her head. "It's fine," she said. "Since you're letting us have the room for three nights, it seems like that's the least we can do."

Bree checked the screen of the iPad. "Noon's like… nearly five hours away. You can probably get a couple of hours on the beach before we have to leave. It's twenty-five out there already."

 _That_ got Sam paying attention. "Awesome! I can't wait to try out my new bikini."

I wouldn't particularly mind seeing Sam do exactly that, but I wasn't really interested in going down onto that beach that was full of all those people. Additionally, having them all out of the apartment would be a great opportunity for me to read more about archaeological sites in the Kimberley. "Watch out for broken glass," I said.

Sam gave me a look. "You're not coming?" I shook my head. She frowned at me. "Oh, Sweetie, come on… you can wear the new swimsuit I bought for you. I bet we can even borrow a volleyball or something from someone down there. It will be fun."

Bree looked like she was going to team up with Sam. "The sand will already be warm," she said. "You'll love it."

"I'll go swimming with you in Broome," I said to Sam. "I promise."

She looked really disappointed. "Okay, whatever. It's not like we're on vacation or anything."

That hurt a little, and I followed Sam into the bedroom when she went to get changed. "Sam…"

She was in the middle of rifling through her case, and stopped. She drew a long, slow breath. "I know," she said, standing with a black bikini in her hand. She threw it on the bed and turned to face me. "Believe me, I know. Sometimes when people look directly at me I still think, 'Oh, my God, they've seen me!' and I get this feeling like now I'm going to get caught. So I kind of get it." She put a hand on one of my hips. "But part of me still wants things to be like they used to be, you know?"

"I never liked big crowds of tourists, though. And I always used to want to stay home."

She looked a little cheeky for just a moment. "I know, but I always used to be able to drag you out anyway. Now I can't steamroll you, you stand your ground."

"So sorry I'm not a pushover anymore," I said to her, lifting her pyjama top over her head and throwing it on the bed with her bikini.

Stepping out of the silk shorts herself, she stood there naked and grinning at me. "Are you _sure_ you don't want to come down to the beach with us?"

"I'll have a great view of it from the balcony," I told her, teasing her by only looking into her eyes. "I might even find a good use for the 50x zoom on your camera."

I did watch her as she tied the bikini bottoms on, though, and then I stood behind her to help her tie up the top. It wasn't until I was at her back that I saw just how little fabric there was there. "God, Sam, are you sure you didn't buy these from the toddler section?"

She smirked at me over her shoulder. "They're made in Brazil," she said as I finished with the straps. She then turned around and posed for me. "What do you think?"

"I think you're going to be arrested."

She laughed and put her arms around my shoulders. "Would you bail me out?"

"I don't know," I said, kissing around her chin and down her neck. "It might be quite fun to just leave you in a cell dressed like that." She _did_ look good; as much as I'd never wear something like that in a million years, she had the body for it. I suppose that was at least one thing she could thank her mother for.

Min double-took at Sam walked out into the main room, but didn't say anything. The bikini top provided absolutely no support and when Sam walked, she jiggled. There was nothing that was _not_ completely pornographic about it. Bree made a non-descript noise. "Min, do I have a blood-nose right now?" she said, looking directly at Sam.

Min deadpanned. "No. Would you like me to give you one?"

Bree giggled. "Yes, by wearing that!" she pointed at Sam.

Min looked at Bree. "Let's go," she said, ignoring Bree's request.

Sam gave me a bit of a forlorn look as they all headed out of the apartment.

"Have fun," I called after them, feeling guilty.

As soon as they were gone, I looked over at the iPad and noticed Sam's camera was on the table next to it. It was odd of her to forget it. I jogged over to the door, opening it and walking out into the corridor. "Sam?" I called. "Sam…?"

No one answered. I made a face, and then walked back inside.

I sat down at the table in front of the iPad, and unlocked it. Prof Chamberlain's email was still open, so I read over it again. Serendipitously, one of his students was in the Kimberley cataloguing some of the ancient mythology and 'dreaming track'-sites. Prof Chamberlain didn't say anything more except that he'd forwarded the images I'd sent him to that student. It would be fantastic if we could meet up with this student of his and get some more information about the area. I did think twice, though, about whether or not I should make that request because I wasn't sure what the supernatural presence wanted of us. I didn't want to drag some other poor person into something if it turned out to be horribly dangerous.

On the other hand, I supposed a phone call wouldn't hurt.

I wrote a quick email to Prof Chamberlain asking for his student's email address and phone number. Perhaps I could call this person of his and ask him if he was experiencing what we had been.

Some movement caught my attention; I looked up. Sam's camera was sitting there, pointed at me. I couldn't see anything moving, so I was about to look back down at the screen when I noticed the red LED light flashing.

 _Sam_ , I thought, reaching over and picking up the camera. I spun it around and checked playback; there was ten minutes of me just sitting quietly at the iPad with a big frown on my face. No wonder she'd been happy to leave it behind – she wanted some action shots of me in my 'natural habitat'. Well, two could play at that game.

I walked out onto the balcony with the camera, and said into the lens, "This is for spying on me." I squinted at the beach until I spotted the three girls dodging the sleeping bodies to find somewhere to lay their towels. Putting the zoom on full, I filmed a good two or three minutes of the worst possible angles I could get of Sam while she slathered herself in coconut oil. Then I spent a couple of minutes using the zoom to appreciate other particular parts of her.

After that, I wandered back inside and sat face-to-face with the camera on the table. I supposed I could use this time to contribute something to Sam's project, she'd probably really appreciate the gesture. It would also be a good apology to her for not going down to the beach to sunbake amongst the unconscious teenagers.

Where should I start, though?

Sam always liked everything to be messy and casual, so I figured I would turn the camera on and then worry about what to do. I leaned forward and pressed the red circle, and then leant back and stared at it.

"This is weird without Sam," I said to it. "I sort of feel like the camera is judging me and thinking, 'Who is this complete amateur and where's the Nishimura girl?'" I chuckled. "Sam's downstairs with aspirations of getting a tan at seven-thirty in the morning. I'm up here, studying. It's university all over again."

I looked at the iPad. It was locked, but Sam had put a picture of Uluru as the lockscreen graphic. I showed it to the camera. I went over what had happened this morning with Min and some other details like my weird feeling of otherness when I looked at my reflection in the lift.

"It wants us to go to the Kimberley, that much is clear," I said. "What it wants there, I have no idea. I don't _think_ it wants to hurt us…" I waited for something to happen, but nothing did. "I suppose we'll find out tonight."

I stopped recording – putting the camera back exactly where I'd found it – and set about reading as much as I could about the Kimberley on both the Cambridge database and the wider Internet.

The girls came back mid-morning, and Sam was no closer to getting a tan than she had been yesterday. "I thought you said the sun here was lethal?" she said, placing a paper bag on the table in front of me. Then, she disappeared off to the shower to wash all the oil off. I put the iPad aside and took a peek inside the bag. It was some sort of gourmet slice full of oats and fruit, and it looked delicious.

Bree sat opposite me. "Your girlfriend is fucking hot," she said with total conviction. I stared at her for a moment, a little surprised. She continued. "I don't know what the hell is wrong with you, how do you even keep your hands off her when she wears that stuff?"

Min dropped a towel over Bree's head on her way past, taking a bite of an apple. "Self control, Bree," she said. "The same reason why I haven't killed you in your sleep yet."

Bree pulled the towel off her head. "Min! Now I'm going to have sand in my scalp!"

I shared a smile with Min. "Where's the fun in killing someone if they're asleep?" I asked rhetorically.

It was supposed to be a joke, and Bree laughed. Min just gave me one of those measured looks and then took another bite of her apple. I remembered the conversation we'd had that morning.

I didn't comment on it, though. Instead, I started on the oat slice.

As we were leaving for the airport, I watched Sam furtively retrieve the camera when she thought I wasn't looking. She flicked the LCD open and rewound some of the footage. I watched her expression closely: she frowned, and then I watched her change the speed. The frown faded into delight. She looked up at me, and I smiled at her from the doorway.

She wheeled her case up to me and put an arm around my waist, kissing my cheek firmly. "Don't think you're off the hook for being a total party-pooper," she said to me. "But, thank you."

"My pleasure," I said, and then helped her get her case into the lift.

Sam was still going through the footage when we piled into Min's car. "Oh, wow, this is great," she said, "especially where you were going over what happened yesterday." Min had twisted around in the driver's seat to reverse out of the park. They made eye contact. Sam held the camera up at her. "Would you mind if I filmed you talking about what happened this morning?"

"Right now?" she asked, giving Sam an odd look as she turned to face the front again and drove us out of the basement complex.

Min did end up agreeing – mostly thanks to Bree – and Sam chatted with them both about the events of the last day or so for most of the trip. As we were approaching the airport, Min kept looking suspiciously at me in the rear-view. Eventually she said, "I don't really know what to make of Lara."

I opened my mouth, and then closed it again. Sam glanced at me. "What do you mean?"

"Well, there is a quiet intensity about her, but it's not like you'd look at her and say, 'Yeah, that woman's killed a hundred men'."

Sam shrugged. "And yet…"

Bree was talking to Min. "I told you that you should have watched Tomb Raider," she told her. "Lara in action is so amazing. She's a machine!" Bree turned back to us, resting her chin on top of her fingers on the back of the chair. "I always thought it was kind of like those Chinese ninjas," she said to the camera. "You know, the ones that are all like peace and calm and balance and then you fuck them over and they break your neck in half a second."

She sounded as if she were talking about the plot of a movie or a video game. It was hard to reconcile that level of enthusiasm to actual real situations where real people died. I still didn't really know if Bree believed any of it had actually happened.

When we pulled up at the airport drop off-lane, there was an awkward moment where we all just looked at each other.

"I wonder if we'll ever see each other again," I said.

Bree looked scandalised. "Of course we will."

Min turned off the car engine. "Maybe if they move England a bit closer to Australia, we can afford the airfares," she suggested as we all got out of the car. "Then you can show us around London."

Sam put the camera in her backpack. "That would actually be awesome," she said. "You can see our new house! By then we'll have decorated it and it will be just like something out of the fifteenth century." She paused. "Except for the flatscreen, of course."

"Of course," Min said neutrally, and handed Sam her suitcase. I smothered a laugh.

"And the coffee machine," I reminded her.

"Oh, my God, whatever!" Sam laughed, extending the handle of her suitcase. "The house will look awesome, okay? We'll just have some barbaric magical appliances that would have got us branded witches back when the house was built."

There was another awkward silence as we all stood around the suitcases. I sighed and held my arms out to Bree. "Come on, then," I said.

She looked like she might melt into a puddle, and skipped into them. Beside me, Min was stiffly hugging Sam. When Bree pulled away from me, she looked as if she was building up courage for something, and then she quickly kissed my cheek and actually _jumped_ back over to Min. "I did it!" she said. "I kissed Lara Croft!"

Min raised her eyebrows at me, a smirk on her lips. "So, do I get a kiss, too?"

I managed to compose myself much faster than the other times she'd flirted with me, although my cheeks were probably still pink. "Sure, if you don't mind the fact Sam would kill you afterward," I said, accepting a hug from her.

I heard Min say over my shoulder toward Sam, "I'd like to see her try." I was happy when the short hug was over, because I found it uncomfortable in a way that Bree's hadn't been.

Sam was more reserved than usual as we'd said our goodbyes. As they drove off, she leaned over to me and said, "You know she wants you, right?"

I looked at her, wondering why she was being so serious all of a sudden. "I would have thought that was obvious from her Facebook."

Sam rolled her eyes at me. "Min," she said simply. "Not Bree."

We wheeled our suitcases into the terminal. "I don't think so," I said, thinking about that conversation I'd had with her on the balcony. "I think she's just a bit scared of me. She really loves Bree, that much is obvious."

Sam shrugged. "Just calling it like I see it," she looked around. "Which company are we flying with again?"

We actually needed to catch two different planes from two different carriers to get to Broome, and the flights went on _forever_. The only good thing about the flights was that the skies were clear and we were able to squeeze up against the window and look down at all the amazing landscapes underneath the plane.

We didn't arrive in Broome until late evening, and the sun had already set. It was a pity; it meant we'd need to wait until the morning to see what the town was like.

Just before we landed, the pilot announced over the speaker. "There's a couple of charter flights who've been bumped ahead of us for the runway. We're going to sit in a holding pattern for ten to fifteen minutes. We'd obviously like to apologize for the delay, but what the big mining wants, big mining gets." He paused. "Also I'm told they have a large stake in this airline and some of them are travelling with us tonight. We apologise for any offense that may have been taken as none was intended." He certainly didn't sound sorry.

Sam had had her camera out to record the landing, and managed to get the announcement. We looked at each other.

While we were waiting, Sam took out the menu and flipped it over to look at what sort of duty-free goods they had for sale on the plane. There wasn't much; a few jewel-encrusted watches, some models of the planes owned by the carrier network and the usual selection of jewellery and pearls.

"That's nice," Sam said, ignoring the request to turn off electrical equipment and using the light on her camera to shop from the catalogue.

I looked away from the window and the page; she was admiring a diamond ring.

I raised an eyebrow at her. She looked sheepish. "I'm not trying to drop hints or anything, I promise, I just think it's nice," she said, and read the description, " _'Cradled in a beautiful tapered band, the one carat Frost diamond has been cut by the finest jewellers into a perfect princess cut for your perfect princess. Renowned for their clarity, Frost diamonds are the hardest in the world and can only be mined in the most rugged terrain. Give your 'The One' a one-and-only: a rare Frost Diamond that will last as long as your love for her'."_ Sam sat back. "Okay, that was kind of corny, but also kind of romantic. I'm totally sold." She whistled. "Wow, twenty-three thousand dollars. You'd really want to make sure she _was_ The One."

"Note to self," I said, smiling at her, and then going back to the window. I couldn't really see anything out of it except the odd house light. Not being able to see anything made me nervous – as if I wasn't nervous enough already. A heaviness had settled in my stomach as we'd approached the Kimberley and it sat there like a lead weight. It made me feel sick.

When the plane finally landed, we'd been on it for six whole hours. Sam stretched. "Are we back in Europe?" she asked as we collected our carry on and headed down the back stairs of the aircraft and into the small airport.

The line stopped suddenly as we entered and we very nearly collided with the family in front of us.

I looked up, not expecting what I actually saw.

The arrival hall was absolutely full to the brim with men. I could hardly describe it. Every single inch of floor space was packed with men of all ages and sizes. There was a banner across the wall that read, "Underground – The Next Frontier". The sound of them all talking and calling to each other was incredible, I couldn't hear myself think.

I could feel my breath catch in my throat, and Sam put her hand on my back to steady me.

"What on…" I said, my sentence trailing off as I saw some commotion on the far side.

At that moment, two figures in sharp suits stood up on a small platform. I couldn't see them very well, but from what I could see, they looked somewhat familiar. There were a few people buzzing around them, and someone gave the woman a microphone. "Good evening, everyone," she said, addressing the arrival hall. The sound of everyone talking died down immediately. "I'm Diane and this is my brother Sean. I'm sure pretty soon you'll just been referring to me as 'that bitch."

There was general laughter from all the men in front of us. It must have been an in-joke, because I certainly didn't find it very funny.

"I'd like to welcome you to Broome, Australia. I know some of you have never been to Australia before. Your rosters should allow you some time to explore the area. The excavations are actually quite a long way away from here and the buses will leave tomorrow." For a moment at the word 'excavations' I got really excited, thinking she might have been talking about archaeological digs. However, she soon dismissed that idea. "Some of you have never been in mines before, and that's fine. We can always use fresh blood." More laughter. "You'll notice your name-tags are colour-coded. That's to do with your bus and your sleeping arrangements on site, as well as what training you'll need." She sounded like she was wrapping up. "Anyway, that's enough talking for nine at night, isn't it? Go get drunk, it'll be the last night you can for a while. Bar tab at the local is on me."

The men all cheered as she stepped off stage and the noise picked up again. I backed against a wall so I could see everyone that was walking around me.

Sam had a really odd look on her face. "You remember when the TV came on by itself at the hotel?" I did, so I nodded. "That's the brother and sister we saw on the news report."


	9. Chapter 9

After Diane had stepped off the stage, the men all started to pour out of the doorways. Fortunately, we were standing on the other side of the arrivals hall.

I stood with my back firmly against the wall, watching them file out. I could hear so many languages and so many accents as they walked past us; they were mostly various Asian languages, but there were European ones as well and – my stomach dropped – Russian.

What were so many men from so many countries doing here? Surely Australia had plenty of locals who could work in their mines. Qualified locals, too. Yet, something about what Diane said had hinted at many of these men not even having set foot in a mine before. What on earth was she doing importing unqualified foreign nationals, then?

I looked over at Sam.

Sam had taken my hand and was holding it tightly, I had thought more for my benefit than hers. However, after most of them were gone she looked over at me with wide open eyes. "Lara," she said, " Did you hear them? Russian."

It hadn't even occurred to me that she had the same associations with the language that I did. Of course, I thought, she had been imprisoned by them on Yamatai right up until I'd rescued her.

After all the men had left, there were only a few people left inside the hall – the passangers who'd been on the plane with us and the mining company assistants who were packing the audio equipment up.

Sam held my hand all the way up to the conveyer belt, which shuddered and started moving. We stood away from the rest of the people collecting their baggage.

"Call me Captain Obvious," Sam whispered to me. "But something's going on here."

She was right. The combination of large numbers of rough-looking men and whatever supernatural force had brought us here made my heart pound.

I was so on edge that when some innocent man who was obviously a local wandered up behind me to collect his suitcase as it drifted past, I ducked out of his way and spun to face him. I had been ready to loop my hands around his neck and bring his face down against my bent knee, but I stopped myself before I lunged forward.

Nevertheless, he saw my sudden movement and looked at me like I was completely crazy. He glanced nervously back at a woman who was standing away from luggage collection, holding a child's hand. Both the woman and the child were staring at us. The man turned back to me. Taking his suitcase, he gave me one last panicked look and rushed out of the hall, towing his wife and son behind him.

Sam put a comforting hand on my shoulder. "At least we know that the cave-painting-thing brought us to the right place," she said. "I have the chills, look." She held up her arm. It was easily a good twenty-five degrees, but she had goose bumps.

We collected our own luggage and headed towards the exit. Sam was practically stitched to my side. "As much as I totally want to rent a house here and just board it up, do you want to dump our luggage somewhere and see what's going on?"

"Yes," I said as we walked. "And I think 'the local' will be the place to find out."

As we walked through the doorway to the taxi rank, Sam was thinking. "Do you think it was actually _them_ that called us here? The brother and sister, with magic or something?"

I thought about the feeling of being watched. Whatever it was felt _present,_ like it was there in the room with us. If the brother and sister were here in Broome the whole time, I couldn't imagine that was possible for them to also be in Sydney. However, I was no expert on magic – at all. Perhaps it _was_ them who had summoned us.

I had opened my mouth to reply to her when Diane rounded the corner to walk past us.

At that second, my blood ran absolutely cold in my veins. The whole scene in front of me collapsed onto her as if she had some sort of personal gravitation pull. Even though I was just standing in the doorway, I felt as if I was falling through space towards her. She was the solid, flat ground that would kill me when I collided with it.

I made eye contact with her. She smiled politely but didn't give me a moment's thought.

As she walked past me my nerves sang, and something was turning my head towards her, forcing me to look at her. I could feel my head being wrenched by invisible hands and my feet scraping along the ground as I resisted being sucked toward her – but I was standing absolutely still in place.

I couldn't stop myself, though. I did turn to look at her as she walked past us. She was wearing a light blouse and I could see her bra-strap through it. Just one knife, one knife straight between the shoulder blades and it would all be over, I thought. Horrified, I shook my head. _What_ would be over? What was going on!

When we stopped walking, she must have guessed it was to do with her. She stopped, herself, and turned around to face me.

Beside her was the mic stand. If I picked it up and drove it into her head, it would kill her.

What I was thinking and my discord with it must not have shown on my face. She only looked mildly surprised, the way anyone would if a stranger was staring at them. "Don't worry," she said, guessing at what was troubling us. "We won't house you with the men. Just speak to the location coordinator when you're on site. He'll be wearing an orange hard-hat. They'll put you two in a different building."

She reminded me of Natla. Maybe that's why I had this powerful and inexplicable desire to kill her? She didn't look at all like Natla, though; she was older, maybe forty-five. She wasn't exactly _un_ attractive, either, but she was no seductress. She just looked neat and symmetrical and perfectly dressed with brown hair pulled into a tight bun.

"We're not miners," Sam said, rescuing me. I felt completely mute. "We're just tourists."

Her eyebrows rose slightly. "Oh," she said. "Well, I did think you two don't seem the type we usually hire, but in this business I've learnt you can't judge a book by its cover. You do have some impressive triceps." She smiled warmly at me, and I looked down at my arms. My muscles were flexed from carrying my luggage, but they didn't look _that_ impressive. "I'm sorry I ruined the first night of your holiday by filling your destination up with drunk men." She paused. "Then again, maybe that's just what you're looking for in a holiday."

I think she was trying to pleasantly joke with us, but I just couldn't say or do anything. I kept having visions of myself brutally murdering her. It was paralysing.

Sam had lost her usual capacity for small talk and laughed awkwardly at her attempt at humour.

I heard footsteps behind us, and the woman looked over our shoulders.

"Di!" a man's voice said as he passed us. I made eye-contact with him and it was clear he recognised me just as I did him. It was Diane's brother. There was something else on his face as well, but he seemed to have other more pressing problems to attend to and couldn't speak with me at that moment. "There are some issues at the location we need to talk about," he said to her, but he kept looking between Diane and I. He was probably just worried he was interrupting us, I decided. "You'll never guess." From his tone, it sounded like she wouldn't need to.

Diane rolled her eyes. "Excuse me," she said to us, and then walked a distance away with him so he could tell her what was going on.

Sam was right, they _did_ look related even though he was easily a foot taller than her. The height difference would make it difficult for me to cleanly kill them both at the same time, although I didn't really have any desire to kill him. Just Diane.

God, I felt sick. I wondered if this was what clinically insane serial killers had to go through. This was just not _me._ "Sam," I murmured to her. "If I look like I'm just about to do something crazy to her, can you restrain me?"

"I know what you mean," Sam said, completely not understanding the weight of what I'd just tried to say. "She reminds me of Natla. Seriously, when she turned away, tell me that you didn't look for wings."

"It's more than that," I said quietly. I watched them. "Sam, I was thinking about killing her."

Sam didn't look at all shocked. "Yeah, but you do that all the time now when people surprise you," she pointed out. "You nearly took out that farmer-looking guy who was just getting his suitcase. And she did kind of suddenly appear in the doorway."

I made a face. She was right, but the intensity of those feelings was still unusual for me and really distressing. I gave them one last look. "Perhaps," I said. "Let's go find somewhere to stay."

That turned out to be a much more difficult task than we'd anticipated. The miners had booked out all the hotels in advance. Everywhere we looked there was the snowflake logo and signs pointing inside various hotels. In the end, we ended up sitting on the corner of the main drag on our suitcases.

"Are you sure there's nowhere else?" I asked her as she tapped away at the iPad on TripAdvisor. "Not even somewhere terribly rated?"

Sam shook her head as she scrolled. "Even the backpackers' that a reviewer claims gave them Hepatitis A is booked out." She looked from the iPad to me. "I guess we could door-knock."

I winced. "Oh, yes, I can completely see how that would go, 'Hello there, we're just looking for a place to stay. Maybe we can sleep in your kids' rooms. Oh, that? That's just my huge, sharp axe. I promise I won't use it to kill anyone in your family'." I paused. "Unless you sneak up on me. I know, why don't we ask that wife I nearly widowed in the airport? They seemed like a nice family."

Sam laughed. "Come on, someone will recognise you."

"And you think that would _help_? You do remember what I actually did in your videos, don't you?"

Sam shrugged. "Yeah, but people don't think it's real. They just think you're some awesome actress."

We sat and stared at the town lights. There were groups of men wandering from various hotels to 'the local' which was on the opposite side and a little way up the road. Even the pub had a huge sign on the front with a snowflake that read, ' _Private Function_ '.

The street was filling with hire cars and taxis and it was becoming a little too crowded for my liking. That was especially given the calibre of people who were piling out of the cars. It made me yearn for the tranquillity of when Sam and I were camping on the plateau.

That gave me an idea. "We've got the tent," I said, looking down between my legs at my suitcase. "We could always go somewhere and camp later."

Sam wasn't paying attention to me. She was looking down the road towards the pub, and a man called out to us and stuck his tongue between his fingers. "How about it, Tomb Raider? Can I raid your tomb?"

"In your dreams, asshole!" Sam yelled back at him.

He and his disgusting friends laughed and continued into the pub. If they were like that sober, I didn't really want to sit here on the corner of the road and wait to find out what they were like if they were drunk.

"Let's get rid of these," I said, gesturing to our suitcases.

Sam looked from them to the nearby hotel. "You know, I bet I could totally sweet talk the receptionist into storing our stuff for a while."

She was right, actually. The receptionist turned out to be a local girl who wasn't at all fond of the miners, either. Sam came up with a completely tragic version of our story about how our holiday had basically been ruined by them and we walked away from the lobby with just our wallets, phones and Sam's camera.

"How are we going to do this?" Sam asked me as we stood in front of the hotel. "Do you want to just walk in like we own the place? If we act like we're supposed to be there they'll probably just let us through."

I shook my head. "You really want to be in the same room with those guys who called out to us before?"

She shrugged. "I figure you'll just break their necks if they touch me."

It was true, but it would cause a very abrupt end to our holiday.

The pub was two storeys and had a wide veranda on both levels. I thought I could see palm trees sprouting out of a beer garden behind it, too. The building was nestled between two restaurants, but one of them looked closed already.

"There," I said. "Just walk over to that restaurant and go through the gate."

We crossed the road, avoiding the taxis, and walked straight through the gate and around the side of the restaurant. Luckily, there was clearly no one still working there at this hour. As soon as we were in shadow, Sam checked her camera and disabled all the LEDs.

The pub and the restaurant shared a fence. We crept along it, snippets of conversation on the other side audible. I stopped for a moment every time I heard someone speak; unfortunately most of the men were talking in languages that weren't English.

After fifteen or twenty minutes, I hadn't heard anything. I looked across to Sam who had the lens of the camera against a knothole in the fence. "Anything?" I whispered.

She beckoned me over.

I heard someone say, "Fuck them, they'll never find me out here."

I pushed through a plant up next to Sam to look at the LCD. There was a lot of light on the side veranda of the pub, and a group of men were standing over near the wall holding beer cans and chatting. They looked to be in their late-forties or early-fifties, and _very_ rough – the type of people you'd cross the road to avoid walking past.

One of them had a greying beard. "Don't know what the wife is going to do with the car though," he said. "Stupid bitch can't afford the payments by herself."

I made a face. "What an absolute prick," I whispered to Sam. She nodded, adjusting some settings on the video.

"So what are you here for?" said another voice, I think coming from the man facing away from us.

The man with the beard shrugged. "The money," he said. "Plus with this stupid AVO and my CR the only decent work I can get is out here. I'll probably end up stuffing my back."

I didn't understand the acronyms, but I figured I could look them up later.

The LCD went dark and we leaned back, looking at it with surprise. Sam pulled the camera from the fence and checked playback. For a moment I thought perhaps that cave-thing was messing with it again, but then I realised there was no light coming from the knothole. I put my eye to it and saw denim. Someone had stepped in front of the fence.

I put my finger to my lips and gestured for Sam to follow me further up the fence. We were crouching against it, listening, when Sam tapped my shoulder and pointed up.

I craned my neck where she was pointing, and saw a light in one of the upper levels. In the window, I saw a flash of a shoulder in a blouse and a pearl earring. Diane was in there; my stomach tightened. Sam angled the camera at the window and zoomed in, but she'd walked away from it by that point.

"We've got to get up there," I said. But how?

I looked about us. If we'd brought the climbing axe with us, we probably could have made it up the palm trees that separated the restaurant from the pub. Although, I thought, that was a bad idea because we'd be visible to everyone.

"You know, we could just _walk_ in," Sam reminded me.

"I'm glad you place such trust in my fighting skills," I told her. "But if two hundred men want to touch us, I'm pretty sure there's nothing I can do about it."

"Well, I don't think they'd _all_ jump on us," she muttered. "And I'm sure there are police around here somewhere if it got out of hand."

From the way that bearded man was speaking, I didn't think the police posed much of a concern to him. "These sort of men? No one's going to say anything useful if there are two women milling about," I said. "They're either going to be hitting on us or watching what they say."

At the back of the restaurant, there was a small gazebo that we could easily get on top of. From that, we could probably jump onto the second level of the veranda… if there was some way to empty the men out of it. "There," I said to Sam. We crept over to the gazebo. She boosted me up onto it, and then I pulled her up after me. Once we were on the roof, though, we were looking down over the beer garden and at least fifty men.

There was a _stripper_ on the back stage. I sighed. It was a good thing we _weren't_ down there if that was the sort of entertainment they were after.

The jump from the gazebo to the veranda would be over some of their heads, and there was no way they wouldn't see us. There didn't seem to be anything I could break, or burn, or knock over, or anything that would cause enough of a commotion for people to not notice us leaping over them.

While I was trying to figure out what to do, something hissed on the ground below us. My first thought was that it was one of Australia's famous snakes, but then I heard a series of others all along the fence. I felt a gentle mist of water on my face and realised it was sprinklers.

Sam peeked down over the edge of the roof. "At this time of night?" she asked. In the half-light, I saw her narrow her eyes. "Wait a second."

"Sam?" I hissed as she lowered herself off the roof and landed in the centre of them. I hoped her iPhone was in its case. "Sam!"

"Come on!" she told me, her hand waving over the edge of the room. "Give me your pocket knife."

I patted all over my trousers, worried for a second that I hadn't put it back in them since we'd been on the plane. I found it, though, and put it in her hand. After I'd given it to her I slid down off the roof and landed beside her in the garden bed. One of the sprinklers was pointing directly into my stomach.

I looked down at my drenched front. "We always seem to end up wet," I said, thinking I should buy more quick dry clothing.

Sam smirked and I saw that glint in her eye. "It's because we're both so hot," she said. "We just can't help it."

I groaned as she fussed about on the ground. "What are you doing?"

"Here," she said, and cut through a plastic pipe. Water poured out of the end of it, and she held it at me so it was gushing all over my boots.

"Thanks," I said flatly, and accepted it.

"Find some way to block the end of it."

That wasn't rocket science. I folded the end of it over, and took the spare hair elastic from my pocket and wrapped it tightly around the crease.

Sam pulled the pipe up off the ground and gave me a full length of it to hold, walking me over to the fence and angling the pipe in my hands. "Stand here," she said and kissed my cheek. "Also, I'm totally sorry for what's about to happen, but please don't move, okay?"

She snuck off along the garden and left me standing there in squelchy boots, holding a long rubber pipe.

After a few seconds, the pipe jerked and a jet of water squirted directly in my face. Remembering Sam's request that I not move, I just turned my head away from it so it was spraying on my ear. Once my eyes were clear, I peeked through them: several sprays of water were shooting up into the air over the pub and falling down onto the beer garden. Sam had turned up the water pressure so high that the angle of the falling water made it look as if it was coming straight from the sky.

"Fucking bullshit weather!" Someone said.

Over the hiss of water, I could hear the sound of large numbers of people slowly moving inside, and then a sliding door closed and I couldn't hear any voices on the other side of the fence at all. After a minute or two, the hose went limp and the water stopped squirting me in the side of the head.

I put the pipe down, and Sam crept back over to me. She looked me up and down. "Oh, my God," she said. "You look like you just went swimming in your clothes."

"Well, I did say I would go swimming with you in Broome," I said. "This wasn't exactly what I had in mind, though."

She chuckled. "That's sort of payback for dunking me in a puddle yesterday. Come on, let's go across now."

We helped each other onto the gazebo. The beer garden and both the verandas were empty, and the jump across was easy and we both made it with no problems. Once we'd pulled ourselves up, the window we'd seen Diane through was only a small distance from us, so we crawled along the decking until we were underneath it.

It was open just a little, and there was more than just the brother and sister in there. In fact, it sounded like an impromptu meeting was taking place.

"Well, what are we going to do about it?" A man's voice asked. It didn't sound like Sean, but it sounded far more educated that the men who had been talking to each other downstairs. "We can't just ignore them."

"Yes, we can," Diane said. "Or we can call the police. I'm not putting up with any more of their nonsense. I'm trying to run a business here."

 _It's her,_ I thought, and then imagined jumping through the glass and throttling her with my bare hands. I could even feel myself doing it; feel the warmth of her skin on her neck and the pulse of her blood trying to get past my tight fingers. It was terrifying in its realism.

Someone sucked air through their teeth. "Yeah," Sean's voice said, leaning on the word and making it last several seconds. "I wouldn't get the police involved or we're going to lose most of our employees."

"I don't care what you do, Sean." Diane's anger seemed to be escalating. "I'm sick of meddling kids interfering with our schedule. Every day we don't start operations is another four million dollars down the drain. Honestly, I don't care. Just _manage it_."

The sound of her heels marching across floorboards led out of the room. The door slammed.

"Your sister…" The other man said, presumably to Sean. He whistled. "Man…"

"I know," Sean said. He sounded resigned. "I'm not going to tell you what it was like growing up with her. There's a lot at stake here, she's under a lot of pressure. It makes her ten times worse than usual."

"Doesn't your family own dozens of mines? What's so special about this one that you need to be here 'managing' it?" The sound of furniture creaked; one or both of them were sitting down on a chair.

Sean laughed humourlessly. "You don't even know what you've just asked," he said. "This project is going to be very, very profitable for us, that's all I can really say."

Sam and I looked at each other. She held her arm up to me: she had goose bumps again.

There was a shout from below. "Rain's stopped!"

I grabbed Sam's hand. "Let's get out of here." We made the leap back to the gazebo just as the men started pouring out into the beer garden again.

From the gazebo onto the ground, though, I slipped as I landed because the soil had turned to mud. Sam landed on top of me, and then we were lying in the mud of a restaurant garden bed in the middle of the night.

The soil the restaurant had used for the garden was rich and dark and caked on everything. I couldn't even get it off my hands, but we'd completely ruined the hose so there was no way we could use it to clean ourselves off.

Sam took some footage of me sitting in a great big puddle of sludge, mock-glaring at her. "This is your fault," I whispered to the camera.

"We should totally mud-wrestle," she said quietly, giggling. "It would mean a late-night slot but probably another half a million viewers."

She helped me up, and we walked awkwardly back across the road while the last arriving men at the pub looked at us very strangely. Not surprisingly, there were no sexual cat-calls this time. Maybe we should always cake ourselves in mud before going out, I thought.

The concierge of the hotel stopped us as we tried to enter and went to speak with the receptionist himself.

While we were waiting outside, we looked back at the pub. "What do you think that was about?" I asked. "You… don't think the 'meddling kids' they were talking about were us, do you?"

Sam shook her head. "No, I don't even think Diane recognised you." She double-took after glancing at me. "I've got to show you how you look," she said, and filmed me for a moment and then showed me playback. One whole side of my head was caked with mud and my hair was matted with it. Sam's head was at least clean. The two of us must have looked a sight to the concierge, though.

I tried to scrap some of the mud out of my hair with my fingers. "This very profitable mine they're talking about, I'm sure that has something to do with the cave-thing wanting us to be here. Maybe they're after something in particular, maybe some sort of sacred artefact or the like." I wondered if maybe the cave-thing was like the centaurs were: a guardian of something.

"Whatever it is, the cave-thing obviously thinks it's important. Through that whole conversation my hair was standing on end," Sam said, and then shuddered. "Ugh, that feeling!"

I thought on it. "About what you said before, I'm sure that the brother and sister weren't the ones to summon us here," I said. "I've been near Diane twice now, and every time I am, I get these ideas about how I could kill her. I'm pretty sure she's not suicidal, so I don't think it's her causing them."

Sam looked at me. "You mean _you're_ not causing them?"

I shook my head.

"But you used to have those awful thoughts like accidentally killing me if I jumped up behind you. It's not like those?"

I thought about the feeling of moving and touching things while I was completely still. "It's almost like an out-of-body experience," I told her. "I can actually feel myself doing these things."

"Huh," Sam said, sounding a mixture of concerned and interested. "Well, I'm not getting any of those. I do feel a bit weird though. The cave-thing's still obviously hanging around."

The concierge returned, wheeling our suitcases. We accepted them from him and then stood outside the front of the hotel, looking at each other.

"So what now?" Sam asked. "It's not like we can shower."

"Aren't we next to a beach?" I asked, and Sam's face brightened. "I'm sure we can find somewhere to camp near it. We can wash the worst of it off in the water."

The main street actually continued along a short sandy track that was difficult to roll our suitcases along. We ended up carrying them, and since they were both maximum weight even the short walk was quite a struggle.

Despite the fact I was still a little sore from our hike the other day, I felt _good_.I recognised that feeling; it was the same feeling I'd had when Natla had dumped me on a mountain top in Peru. I was doing something. I was in the right place, and while I didn't really know exactly what the cave-thing wanted us to do, I felt ready for whatever it was.

So I didn't understand what those visions of murdering Diane were about, so what? At least I didn't want to shag her every minute like I had with Natla.

I looked over at Sam. Sam would get her film, I thought. She'll love this – she looks like she's loving it already. She saw me watching her and smiled. "You don't want to carry my case for me, do you?" she asked, labouring to put one foot in front of the other with it. "No?"

The track actually didn't lead to a main beach, but someone's beach house that was clearly a holiday home. There was no one there and it was all locked up. The mailbox was stuffed to the brim with catalogues in various stages of decomposition, so I felt reasonably certain it would be safe to camp in their yard.

Their property actually backed onto a small beach that faced away from the town. After we'd left the cases in the middle of their long dead lawn, we wandered out onto it to have a look.

Min _had_ been right, Broome had some beautiful beaches. It was too dark for the water to be anything but black, however the sand was completely white and flat. I looked down at our feet as we walked, admiring the footsteps we left behind us. They were the only ones on the beach.

I stopped and looked about us. There were no lights, no sounds, nothing… just the moonlight and the sound of waves gently breaking on the sand.

Sam stopped walking as well, turning toward me. I gave her a sideways smile. Very deliberately, I pulled my muddy t-shirt over my head and dropped it beside me.

Her face absolutely lit up, and instead of saying anything she just jumped into my arms. I caught her legs around my waist as she kissed me firmly and then said, "I was going to ask if you wanted to go skinny-dipping," she said. "But I never thought you'd say yes in a million years."

"Bit difficult to get all my clothes off with you wrapped around me," I told her, and kissed her back.

She climbed off me and we both peeled off all our muddy clothes and left them on the beach, running into the water. Compared to the warm night air the water was chilly, and Sam shrieked as we splashed into it. I took a big gulp of air and dove underneath, shaking my hair to get the mud out. When I surfaced, Sam was still standing at waist-height with her arms crossed tightly across her chest and gritted teeth.

I swam up to her and pulled her underneath for a moment, and then let her go.

She surfaced. "Oh, my God!" she said to me. "It's _cold!_ "

The glacial stream in Peru I'd fallen into on my hunt for the Scion fragment had been cold. _This_ wasn't cold. "Are you sure?" I asked her. "Perhaps you should check?" I pulled her under again.

After that, she squealed and tried to escape back to the shore, laughing. I half-swam, half-ran after her and easily caught up. We were in shallow water by then, so I wrapped my arms around her legs and laughed until my sides hurt as she tried to claw her way out of the water along the sand. Eventually she gave up, turning onto her back and lying on the beach as the gentle waves lapped around her.

God, she looked beautiful. Her bare skin looked so soft in this light, and with the waves rolling in around her it looked like something out of a fairy-tale. She was breathing heavily from running and laughing, and a hand was flopped across her stomach. She looked up at me, smiling. "You got me," she said. "I yield already."

"I love you," I told her.

The smile faded, and for just a moment her rib cage stopped rising and falling as she held her breath. Eventually, she chuckled, her cheeks flushing with delight. "You always catch me so off guard when you tell me," she said.

I shrugged. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be." She reached up and pulled my head down to hers so our lips could touch. My skin was cold from the water, and it made her tongue feel hot in comparison. Our nipples brushed as I leaned over her. I touched one of hers with my fingertips. "Sometimes I'm not sure if you…" she didn't finish her sentence.

I pulled away slightly, forgetting her breasts. "Pardon?"

She shook her head slightly. "Never mind, it's not important."

I sat up again. "Really? Because it sounded important."

She exhaled. "I don't know," she said. "Sometimes I'm not sure if you love me." She made a face, not happy with how she'd expressed herself. "I mean, I know you love me – we're basically family. But, you know, sometimes I'm not sure if you're _in_ love with me."

God, that felt like a punch in the stomach. "Of course I am," I told her, probably sounding a little hurt. "How can you say that? You mean the world to me."

She took my hand. "You're just hard to read, is all. And, like, when I look at Bree and Min—"

"—Stop," I told her, closing my eyes for a moment. "Please, stop. Please don't compare our relationship to theirs. We're—"

"I know, I'm sorry…" she interrupted me and put a hand over her face for a second. "That was totally unfair of me. Can we forget I said that? I didn't mean it."

I nodded, and lay down next to her in the sand, our fingers interlaced. The waves lapping around us, we gazed at the Milky Way stretching across the sky. It would have been a magical experience, except I couldn't do what I'd told Sam I would and forget that she'd said she didn't feel loved. Surely there was something I could come up with that would solve that feeling for her – something that didn't involve snogging her in public. I'd need to think on it.

"Lara. I can practically hear your teeth grinding."

I laughed. "Oh, God, is it that obvious?"

She lifted my hand up and kissed the back of it. She left it there for a moment, and the put it on her stomach. "So," she said. "'Buses leave tomorrow'," she quoted Diane's speech from the arrival hall. "Guess that means we do, too."

"God knows what we'll find," I said. "I had a bad feeling about this, but somehow I know that means we're on the right track."

No sooner had I said that, a shooting star travelled halfway across the sky, burning out close to the centre. "Look!" Sam said, pointing up at the night sky.

It reminded me of something I'd read in the hotel earlier that day. "I read what some Aboriginal tribes believe about shooting stars this morning."

Sam looked at me, waiting for me to continue.

"They believe that a shooting star is a canoe sent back from the spirit-world. It's supposed to let the family of someone who's died know that they have safely reached the other side," I recited, imagining what that would be like. "I wonder if there's some family out there now who've been looking at the sky and waiting for that."

"That's so depressing," Sam said. "I like our version better: make a wish!" She looked back upward. "Did you make one?"

 _I wish you knew just how much I love you_ , I thought, looking across at her. Then I wondered if I'd wasted it and should have wished for world peace or a safe end to whatever adventure we were about to get embroiled in. "Yes."

She squeezed my hand. "Don't tell me, though," she said. "Then it won't come true."

We lay there until it was too cold to stay any longer, stiffly standing up and washing the sand off our backs in the water. After we'd collected our dirty clothes, we put on our pyjamas and pitched the tent in the shadow of the house. The window-flap was facing out toward the sea, so I left it open and gazed through it while Sam fussed about with her electronics. The sand was just beautiful – in this light it was glittering like the beach was coated in cut diamonds. It reminded me of my dream about the Rainbow Serpent in the river beds.

Sam had connected her camera to the iPad, presumably to backup the data. It was taking some time so she was checking all her social media accounts while she waited for it to finish.

"Bree says hi," Sam said. "Also she's sad that we didn't leave my bikini behind so she could convince Min to wear it."

I winced. "Poor Min," I said. "Tell them hello from me."

After a few minutes, there was the sound of a car backfiring in the distance and then tyres screaming against the road. I had assumed it was an accident, but the sound kept repeating. Someone from that group of men was doing wheelies in their hire car.

I looked at the inside of the tent. I hoped no one would find us here. Just in case, I took Sam's axe out of the suitcase and put it beside me.

"You going to cuddle that to sleep?" Sam asked me, grinning.

"Just in case they find us," I said. "I don't like the type of men they are. Something isn't right about them." That reminded me. "Oh, that man with the beard said something about CROs or AVs or something, I forget. Can you show me the footage?"

"In a second," Sam said, waiting for the backup to complete. She then disconnected the cable and gave the camera to me. I wound through the footage until I got to what I was looking for. " _'Plus with this stupid AVO and my CR the only decent work I can get is out here_ '."

Sam already had Google up on the iPad, and was searching for the acronyms before I even needed to ask her to. I watched her eyebrows lower as she selected a result and read it to me, " _'In Australia, an_ _Apprehended Violence Order (AVO)_ _is an Order made by a court against a person who makes you fear for your safety, to protect you from further violence, intimidation or harassment'._ "

I swallowed, silent.

Sam searched for the next one. "'CR' stands for 'Criminal Record."

"Wow," I said, thinking about what that meant. Sean had said something about getting police involved meaning losing most of their employees, and it wasn't hard to join the dots. "I think whatever company they work for hires criminals," I said. "Or ex-criminals, or something. Maybe they don't have to pay them as much because they're desperate for work."

Sam had a bleak expression. "I hope that's the only reason they hire them," she said. "Who _is_ this company, anyway? I see snowflakes everywhere and I don't know what they mean." She set to work on Google again until she'd found an image that looked like the logo we saw everywhere. She tapped it, and the homepage of the mining company loaded.

"' _Frost International'_ ," I read over Sam's shoulder. I thought for a moment. "Wasn't that the name of that diamond you were looking at on the plane?"

Sam made a face. "Yeah, doesn't seem quite so beautiful anymore, considering the type of men who excavated it." She read on. "Diane and Sean Frost," she said, tapping her chin and thinking. "Actually, Dad went to a function of theirs, once. I think they're pretty big in the corporate world."

"What are they doing here, then?" I asked, echoing the man from the impromptu meeting's thoughts. "This isn't exactly New York."

Sam shook her head and locked the iPad, stowing it in its case.

While we were getting ready to sleep, I undid the button to close the window flap and caught sight of the sparkling beach again. Like diamonds, I thought.

There was more to this, I knew it. I couldn't wait to find out what was going on.


	10. Chapter 10

I had been used to the dull greys of Broome at night, so when I emerged from the tent at dawn I wondered if I was even in the same place. The sand on the beach was still white, but under our tent the soil was a deep shade of red. I had to touch it to believe it. Bending down, I took a handful, brushing it across my palm with my thumb. It left a light orange stain on my skin.

On the horizon a pink sunrise was spilling out across the sea, which by the time it reached the shore had graduated to an impossibly bright blue.

I stood and gazed at it for a minute; I'd seen vistas like this in postcards, but I'd always assumed they were photoshopped. God, England was just so _grey_ in comparison. It was hard to believe there were people living here who woke up every morning and looked out to this as they ate their breakfast. What a life that must be.

"Sam," I said, pulling the flat open and going back inside the tent. "Look at this!"

Sam had the pillow over her head. "Coffee first, then look."

"Yes, about that," I said, pulling the pillow off her head. "S _omeone_ put half their clothes in my suitcase and the coffee machine wouldn't fit in after that." I confiscated her sleeping bag while she was trying to wriggle back into it. "Also I'm not sure where you'd like me to plug it in."

Without her sleeping bag and her pillow, Sam was forced to actually wake up. She yawned and then stopped mid-way through it to stare at me. "You look kind of cheerful for someone who has an enormous axe-print on their face."

I touched my cheek; there was some sort of mark there. Sam took out her hand-mirror and showed me the damage. I must have slept with my face on the flat of Sam's axe.

"Like, I was joking when I said you'd cuddle it to sleep," she said, putting the mirror away, grabbing the camera and crawling out of the tent with me. "Maybe I should buy you a plush toy."

"One I can kill intruders and climb with, please," I said as we both stood up.

Sam switched on the camera and held it up toward the water, looking down at the LCD. I leaned over to see how the colours came out on film; I should have known Sam wouldn't choose any device that didn't capture them beautifully.

"I hope the view from our new house in Surrey looks even half as beautiful as this in spring," Sam said wistfully, smiling down at the screen. I put a couple of fingers under her chin and made her look at it with her eyes. She chuckled. "You'll thank me when you're eighty and you can't remember how beautiful this is without the footage."

"If I make it to eighty I'll thank you for a lot more than that." I smiled at her.

She didn't return my smile. "Don't say that," she said nervously. "Of course you will."

I shrugged. "Well, we did just survive the night in the same town as a bunch of drunken criminals, so perhaps there's hope," I said wryly.

Sam looked down at the camera, but her eyes were glazed and I could see she wasn't watching what was on the screen. "It's so weird to talk like that," she said. "I mean, I know we do really dangerous stuff, but when you actually stop and think about what that means…"

"We could die?"

She nodded, and then shook her head as if she was trying to snap herself out of it. "This topic is _way_ too morbid for here." She gestured out at the bright colours in front of us, and then invited herself into my arms. I wrapped them around her and kissed her temple. "This is romantic. It's a pity we have to leave here and go follow the bad guys to their lair."

I laughed at her choice of words. "We can't be a hundred per cent certain they _are_ the 'bad guys' yet," I reminded her. "Just because Natla was a CEO and a megalomaniac doesn't mean they all are."

Sam gave me a look. "Come _on_. She hires _criminals_."

I shrugged. "You said yourself last night that hiring employees no one else wants probably saves the company a lot of money. And she was talking about money last night, too. For all we know she could be just a regular multi-millionaire and it's this… cave-thing that's the bad guy, wanting me to kill an ordinary businesswoman."

Sam made a face. "I hadn't thought of that," she confessed.

No sooner had she said that, the main support for the tent snapped behind us. I jumped forward and pulled Sam with me, spinning around to face whatever had caused it.

Nothing was there, though, just a collapsed tent. Sam didn't seem half as concerned as I was. She pulled away from me and went to investigate, camera poised. "Here," she said, turning the canvas over and showing me the support. "It's just slipped out of the metal casing, I probably knocked it on the way out."

My heart was still pounding.

We got dressed and packed up, cramming everything back into our suitcases and struggling back across the sandy track onto the main street.

Along the median strip of the road six touring buses were parked. There weren't any men in them yet, so we went to take a peek. Sam filmed along them. I noticed as we wheeled our suitcases past that there was a sticker on each that boasted they were designed for forty-six adult passengers. Great, I thought, more than two hundred and fifty men.

At that moment, I hardly felt fit to take on even one of them. "I'm absolutely starving," I said. "There's got to be somewhere open that sells food."

I wasn't really much of a fan of McDonalds, but our choices were limited by the fact it wasn't even eight in the morning so we had no option but to eat there. Unfortunately, it was also full of miners. There were only a few of them smoking outside, and we didn't realise how many there were until we'd opened the doors and saw the enormous queues for every register.

Already some of them were shouting at each other. It wasn't in English, though, so I couldn't tell what it was about.

Once we'd entered a whole variety of heads turned toward us. I felt that incredible sensory acuity I sometimes got when I thought I'd need to act quickly, and I grabbed Sam's hand just in case.

Sam sidled up close to me. "Whoa," she said under her breath. "Let's just go back to the beach, you can do that Survivor thing you do and catch a fish with your bare hands or something." She paused. "You know, that would look great on film."

Someone wolf-whistled, and then the man standing behind him shoved him in the back and said, "Oi, I've got a fucking headache."

I thought I may have heard a few inappropriate comments muttered, but it looked like their collective hangover was going to prevent them from hitting on us en masse. Most of them looked more interested in their food than us, which was a relief. I still felt unsafe. "Beach sounds great," I murmured to Sam. "Let's get out of here."

As we turned to go, someone yelled, "What? Are we not good enough for you _ladies_?"

"Go, go, go," I said to Sam, pushing her out of the door ahead of me. A hand caught my arm and prevented me from following her. The door fell shut between us and I saw Sam spin and gape at me, eyes wide.

I twisted my arm and wrenched it away from whoever had stopped me, turning to face him. He was younger than the men we'd seen at the pub last night, and his face was covered in tattoos. They didn't suit him at all, and neither did his shaved head. He looked like he was trying too hard to appear tough. I wondered if this was an act, as well.

I saw the counter-staff all look anxiously at each other. "Quarter-pounder with no pickles?" one of them called, breaking the silence.

"I can see it's busy in here," I said, trying to prevent a fight. "I'm going to go somewhere where I don't have to wait to eat."

The man grabbed his crotch, I think half-jokingly. "Maybe I've got something you can eat."

Was he _serious_? I didn't care if he was joking, that was _not_ on. It seemed I wasn't going to be able to avoid a fight, after all. I opened my mouth to say something extremely inflammatory that would probably result in him openly attacking me, when someone else spoke.

"Jesus, eat a Snickers or something, mate," the voice said quite amicably in a broad Australian accent. "It's a bit early for this." It belonged to another man with tattoos, but this man had blond dreadlocks and the tattoos were all up an arm. As he stepped around the onlookers, I recognised him from the same interview I'd seen Diane and Sean featured on at the hotel. He was the protester, and he honestly looked like he'd just wandered off the beach at that moment. He was even barefoot.

I backed away from him as he passed me just in case, but all he did was just hold the door open for me. I looked from him to the other men, and then extended the handle of my suitcase and walked through the doorway. Sam looked overjoyed that I was in one piece, and took my hand firmly as he ushered us back into the car park, past a gauntlet of smoking miners. I could hear the man he'd interrupted yelled a string of insults and threats at us, but he appeared to have no intention of acting on them.

When we were a safe distance away, Sam abandoned her suitcase and threw her arms around me. "Oh, my God," she said. "I mean, I know you'd be fine, but oh, my God!"

I wasn't so confident; that one man I would have been fine to take on, but what if more of the men in there had become involved? I was lucky they were all so hungover. Some of them looked like they might be quite agile.

I looked over Sam's shoulder at the surfer. "Thanks," I said, but I didn't like the charming smile he was trying to give me. As men go he was quite attractive… but, no. It must have shown on my face.

"You're welcome," he said. "Even though you'd definitely have fucked him up, that's probably not a great way to start the day." When Sam finished hugging me, he leant forward and extended his hand. "Matt McDermott," he said. "But everyone calls me Macca." He gestured at the restaurant we'd just escaped from with his other hand. "Best you don't smash up my place, hey?"

I shook his hand, but I was confused because he looked as if he was expecting us to laugh. Sam and I glanced at eat other. Sam asked pleasantly as she shook his hand, too, "Oh, you own the franchise?"

He narrowed his eyes at us and waved a hand dismissively. "Guess it's an Aussie thing." He pointed at me, and then Sam. "Lara Croft and Samantha… something, right?"

That may have made me smile a little. I would have smiled more, but he was being really nice and it was suspicious. Sam answered instead. "Nishimura," she said. "But it's okay, no one gets it straight away. I get called everything." Sam _was_ smiling at him and looked as if she'd be happy with whatever he called her.

He grinned warmly at her, and then looked back to me. "So what are you two doing here? I don't suppose Frost hired you, did they?" He laughed, showing two rows of perfectly straight teeth. "I know you had to kill some guys on that island, but didn't the cops decide not to charge you because it was clear it was self-defence?"

Sam and I shared a glance. "It's hard to explain why we're here," I said, thinking that opening a conversation with 'we were summoned here by a supernatural force that's been haunting us since we disturbed a sacred Aboriginal site' probably wasn't the best way to introduce ourselves to him. "We're definitely _not_ with those miners."

He clapped me on the back as if I was already one of his 'mates'. "I hear you," he said. "We've got to stop those wankers before they dig up every national park in the Kimberley for a buck. Did you come for the blockade? I was going to try and convince you to join it but maybe I don't have to."

Blockade? I shook my head.

He looked a little disappointed, but explained anyway. "We managed to get enough people to block the only road into Windjana so they can't get the heavy machinery or the buses in. There's media there and everything, but it would be _so awesome_ if someone with a public profile joined us."

The pieces fit together in my head: his designs on us were purely strategic. I felt better about him knowing that he wasn't just trying to get into our knickers.

Sam's ears pricked up at the mention of media. She looked hopefully at me for permission, even though I completely wouldn't be able to prevent her from going if she really wanted to. When I thought about it, there was no reason we shouldn't go. If they were blocking the machinery from going into the mine, it wasn't as if the mine would be operational. Additionally it might mean we'd get the opportunity to snoop around the site before all the men were there. Perhaps I could figure out why the cave thing was so insistent I kill Diane, and whether it was trying to protect something.

"How close is the blockade to the mine?" I asked him.

He shrugged. "Maybe five 'k's?"

We could walk that, I thought. I opened my mouth to say we'd come, and a strong sense of déjà vu washed over me. I could feel myself moving and hear myself speaking as I stood in place. The muscles in my mouth actually seemed to form the words, 'Okay, we'll come' while my lips were still touching.

"Okay, we'll come," I said. The feeling disappeared. It was so odd that it knew exactly the way I'd speak and how I'd sound. I hoped it wasn't showing me the future; I wasn't certain I would ever be ready to do the brutal things I'd felt myself doing to Diane.

Sam made an excited noise and threw her arms around me again, bringing me back to reality. Macca looked charmed by her enthusiasm and I didn't like it at all. "This is so cool," she said. "Wow, this is going to make for _great_ video." She turned back to Macca, taking the camera out of the pouch hanging around her neck. "Can I?" She held the camera at him.

He grinned at her. "You can do whatever you like."

I opened my mouth, but closed it because I couldn't figure out what to say to that. It wasn't _my_ job to tell people Sam was taken, it was hers. I looked at her, but she was too busy messing about with the settings on her camera. My muscles were still singing from the adrenaline rush I'd had inside McDonalds and I was too distracted by the weird experience I'd just had to bother following it up for now. Perhaps she hadn't noticed.

He beckoned to us, turning and walking towards a people mover that was parked at the end of the car park. "Come on," he said. "I'm going to try my luck with the drive-through and then we'll head out to the blockade." He unlocked the car and slid open the side door for us. "You know, it's so weird that I felt like eating here," he said. "I normally hate huge corporations but I just had this random craving for fried crap this morning and I couldn't stop thinking about a Big Mac. I'm a bad leftie."

Sam shrugged, wheeling her suitcase up to the door. "It's not like we're judging you. We're here, too."

He looked down at our cases. "You want to dump those at the backpackers'?" he asked. "I need to pick a couple of people up from there, and it's probably best not to take all that stuff out to the camp in case the cops break us up."

I didn't like the sound of that at all, but offloading the big suitcases would probably be a great idea.

The backpackers' was just up the road, and Macca tried to insist we stay in the car while he took our belongings into the lockup. Sam may have been happy to let him do that, but I was perfectly capable of carrying my own case. He'd actually lifted it from the boot when I grabbed one of the handles. "I can manage," I said, trying to sound friendly.

He shook his head. "Nah, it's my pleasure," he said, the big muscles in his arms bulging as he lifted it.

I didn't let go.

He raised his eyebrows. "You're not going to let me carry it, are you?" I shook my head and gave it another tug. He let me have it. "Can you even lift it? It looks as big as you are."

I placed it pointedly on the ground and extended the handle, wheeling it along the footpath.

"Touché," he said, and then laughed and took Sam's case out.

I glanced back; Sam had been filming the whole thing from the passenger seat. She winked at me.

The doorway of the backpackers was narrow and the reception was tucked beside the staircase. I wheeled my case up to it, flopped the case over on the ground and unzipped it. Macca stood watching me pull out my pack and tuck a few changes of clothes into it. I zipped the suitcase closed and wheeled it around to the receptionist.

Then, I went over to him, took Sam's case and did the same for her. I put a few extra clothes in for her, though, because she liked to have a choice of what to wear. While Macca was saying something to the receptionist, I spotted the tiny black bag I remembered so clearly from Gatwick airport. On impulse, I shoved it into the front pocket of her backpack.

"Hah, you guys must be great friends," he said as he observed me. "My mates would never let me touch their stuff."

I gave him a look and zipped Sam's case closed. I debated whether or not that was the point where I should have told him about Sam and I, but in the end I decided against it. "You could say that," I said, and delivered Sam's suitcase to the receptionist who gave me a ticket for the cases and then wheeled them out into a back room. I slung my pack on.

"Are you going to let me help now?" he asked, looking down at Sam's backpack which was near his feet.

I picked it up and put it on my front and then quirked an eyebrow at him. He laughed. "You're good value," he said and then leaned over and hammered on the wall of the stairwell beside reception. I jumped. "Jammas! Amanda!" he shouted. "We're going!"

The first person to come down the stairs was a very tanned brunette who was dressed much the same as Macca minus the blond dreadlocks. He seemed a little familiar; I wondered if he'd been on the telly as well. He grinned at me and then said to Macca, "Fuck, you got her. You're my hero." He pretended to be about to kiss Macca, who pushed him away and they shoved each other around a bit. I rolled my eyes at them, but it was sort of endearing.

The man held his hand out to me. "James—'Jammas'," he said. "I was on the plane with you for six hours but it turns out I have no balls."

"Good to know," I said, and shook his hand. "I don't suppose there's any reason I need to tell you who I am?"

"Unless you're not our ticket to international news, nope," he said, and then roughly patted Macca's cheek before heading outside. "Seriously, man – awesome." He gave me a thumbs-up on his way out.

As he exited, I heard more footsteps rush down the stairs and an American accent say, "God, you want to give us a little _less_ warning next time? I didn't have time to…" Her sentence trailed off as I looked up at her.

It took me a second to recognise her because in a million years I wouldn't have expected to see her here. It was the same girl we'd run into in Wollemi. She was frozen midway down the stairs as we gaped at each other.

I had goose bumps. What was _she_ doing here?


	11. Chapter 11

The girl looked absolutely shocked to see me for just a fraction of a second, and then her face settled into a scowl. "What the fuck are you doing here?" she asked, frozen midway down the stairs and glaring down at me. "Did you follow me?"

"I was about to ask you the same thing," I said, although I wouldn't have said it quite like she had. I doubted she'd followed me, because she was clearly shocked to see me. And if she hadn't followed me and I hadn't followed her, there was more at play here than just us bumping into each other twice in really obscure locations. "What are the odds of this happening?"

She didn't answer me. Instead, she looked at Macca. "Seriously, what the hell?"

He looked uncomfortable, glancing sideways at me to check to see if I was upset by how she'd spoken to me. "Sorry, Amanda, I didn't know you guys knew each other."

"I didn't, either," I muttered. I took a deep breath, thinking that we should just settle whatever perceived differences she had with me for the sake of everyone else. "Listen, I don't—"

"No, you listen," she said, interrupting me and walking slowly down the rest of the stairs. "Next time you want my number, how about having the guts to actually ask me yourself? At least then I'd have the satisfaction of saying no to your face." As she reached the bottom of the stairs she spent a few seconds glaring at me. There was an ominous weight about Amanda's stare that made my skin crawl, but I couldn't put my finger on why it affected me so much. I wondered if the cave-thing was involved with her, too.

Eventually, she made an exasperated noise and spun on the heel of her boots, walking out the door. Boots, I thought, that's what I like to wear. It was only at that point that I took stock of the rest of what she had on: a long sleeve top with a polo neck despite how warm it was getting outside. There was no end to the mysteries surrounding this girl.

Macca and I just stared after her.

After just a few seconds, he laughed nervously. "What the fuck?" he said, and then looked at me. "Did you run over her cat or something? Geez!"

"I'm not exaggerating when I say I have no idea at all what her problem is," I said. "Literally, we just bumped into her while we were hiking. It was the first time we met her. I never asked anyone for her phone number." I did seriously wonder if she might be one of the people Sam had been talking to on Bree's Facebook, but even that didn't make sense because Sam hadn't been posting as herself. It was just a total mystery.

Macca and I followed her out to the people mover. Amanda had taken the front passenger seat and had her eyes forward as he opened the sliding door for me. Sam accepted her backpack and then helped me up the stair with mine and we dumped them on the seat behind us. She was trying to get my attention the whole time. "It's her!" she hissed into my ear as I sat beside her. "That blond girl from near the cave!"

As I sat, Amanda and I made eye-contact in the rear view mirror and I looked away quickly. Then I felt stupid for being so timid about it and had a debate with myself about whether or not it would be appropriate of me to just insist she be nice to us. While I was staring out the window, Sam took my hand and leaned over to my ear again, holding the camera close to her face so the mic would pick up her voice. "What is she wearing, anyway? Did I make a mistake and fly us to Alaska?"

"Shh!" I said quietly to Sam, but I was smiling.

"What are you two whispering about?" Jammas asked, leaning his arms on the back of the seat we'd put our bags on.

"Clothes," Sam said, putting on a ditzy voice, and swinging the camera around to face him. "I'm totally serious."

He laughed. "No way," he said, joking. "You were arguing about who gets me, weren't you?"

"Aren't you with…" I said quietly, tilting my head back towards Amanda. I hadn't really thought about it, but I'd assumed since it seemed they were in the same room that they were together.

He laughed once. "Working on it!" he said loudly, and shot Amanda a grin. She must have been watching us in the mirror, because she made a disgusted noise.

Sam winced. "Really? You don't maybe want someone who, like, doesn't want to kill you in your sleep?"

"You offering?" he said, clearly kidding with us. His smile faded a little as he continued, shrugging. "I don't know what's up with her today, but she's usually just quiet. And, you know…" he made a beckoning motion with his hands, leaning in toward us as he glanced up to check if Amanda was listening. "All those clothes. Makes you wonder what's underneath, yeah?"

We leaned back. Sam looked very entertained. "Oh, my God," she said, turning around to face the front. "I can't believe you just said that!"

While Sam and I were sorting out our seatbelts, Macca started the engine and tried to do a three point turn out of the tiny car park at the backpackers'. He managed it quite admirably, but when we finally made it out he nearly hit over a group of miners who were walking past from their hotel, bags in tow.

"Jesus, fucking," he said, reminding me of Australians and their love of expletives. "If I'd just accelerated a little bit faster, I'd have killed the whole lot of them." He twisted back to us at the traffic lights. "I'm a cold, hard, killer, too, you see," he said, sounding anything but. "I hope you're not disappointed. I think that bald guy was in that group. "

Sam was looking at me, too, as if she was waiting for me to reply.

"No, I'm still completely impressed," I said, playing along. The more these two boys spoke, the more I thought that perhaps Macca hadn't been that interested in Sam, after all. Being forward just seemed to be how he interacted with people.

Macca looked at Amanda, who was trying to appear as if she wasn't involved in the conversation. He flexed his arm so his biceps bulged. "It's my muscles," he told her. "It's definitely my muscles. They always get the girls."

"Can we just go already?" she asked.

I glanced sideways at Sam. Unlike Amanda, she was watching his muscles. I sighed.

We hadn't driven for five minutes before Broome abruptly ended and we were on a sealed road in the middle of nowhere. The shoulder was the same deep orange as the soil we'd camped on and lush green shrubs and trees were growing out of it. In contrast to Sydney there wasn't a single cloud in the sky and the morning sun shining through the window already had a bite to it.

Thinking of Sydney reminded me what had brought us here. "Macca," I said, saying his name to get his attention. "I know the location of this mine is important, but I don't actually know why it's important." Beside me, Sam had her camera pointed at him as he drove.

I could see Amanda roll her eyes in the mirror. She was looking out the window, though, and not at me.

Jammas groaned behind us. "Don't get him started," he warned me.

"Too late!" Macca said, and then answered me. "Do you know about the Bunuba War?" He glanced at me and saw as I shook my head. "The name 'Jandamarra' mean anything?"

It sounded familiar, I thought. I think I'd read something about him in the research papers I'd downloaded the day beforehand. "Wasn't he a local who killed some European Settlers back in the late nineteen hundreds?"

Macca looked delighted I knew. "Yeah, an Aboriginal guy. He joined the settler police. I'll spare you the details but basically the settlers did a lot of racist shit and he ended up turning on them, killing his police partner and stealing some guns. The stand-off between his tribe and the settlers lasted for three years and there are all sorts of stories about his supernatural ability to appear suddenly, kill someone and then vanish completely. Anyway he was killed in his hideout in Tunnel Creek which is near Windjana Gorge by another Aboriginal guy who was supposed to also have magical powers. Basically everyone in Aboriginal stories has weird magical powers." He laughed. "Tunnel Creek and Windjana Gorge are dead smack bang on either side of where the mine's actually going to be, and there's a very real threat to both sites. It's a fucking tragedy that corporations can ever get permits for this stuff."

He seemed to know a lot about the area. "You're a student, aren't you?"

"Was," he said.

"Did you study Australian History? Is that how you know all this?"

He shook his head. "Bachaelor of Arts," he said. "Not worth the paper it's printed on. Amanda here's the decorated historian," he jerked his thumb at her.

"Archaeologist," she corrected him. "And there's a lot more to the area than what he's told you."

That made me sit up straight. "You're an archaeologist, too?"

Sam looked up over the LCD at me, eyebrows in her hairline.

Amanda didn't look like she wanted to discuss it, so Macca answered for her. "All the way from your neck of the woods," he said. "Cambridge."

Which would mean only one thing. "You'd have Professor Chamberlain as your supervisor," I realised aloud. There wouldn't be more than one student from Cambridge doing projects in the Kimberley, surely. He must have been talking about her in his long letter. At least it went some of the way to explaining what her problem with me was; I wondered if perhaps Prof Chamberlain had said something to her about Peru that had got her back up. I couldn't think of any other reason she'd dislike us so much. "You're the student he sent the drawings to whose contact details I asked for!"

"You shouldn't have copied the designs," she said, still looking out the window. "You don't even know what you're doing."

Macca looked uncomfortable again. Behind us, Jammas said pointedly. "So how long 'til we get to the blockade?"

The drive ended up being about five or six hours. When Sam and I had driven up the coast with Bree and Min, there had been plenty of little towns and other distractions along the road, but not out here. Here, it was just a flat, long road. Bree and Min had also been great company. It wasn't that Macca and Jammas weren't, really, it's just that everyone was a little on edge with Amanda brooding in the front seat. She didn't seem to want to talk much but just her presence was a constant weight on the four of us.

In the afternoon, Sam fell asleep on my shoulder. I put her camera safely on my lap and my arm around her so she didn't flop against the window and bump her head.

Jammas watched us. "Aww, you guys must be pretty close," he whispered. "Childhood friends, right?"

I wondered if that should be the moment I said something about us. In the end, I didn't. It wasn't as if he was actually asking for that information and I didn't really want to make him feel uncomfortable if he wasn't. You just never knew how people were going to react, and this trip was already awkward enough. "Boarding school."

He nodded as if that explained why I was cuddling her. As soon as the moment was over, I decided that I should have said something. It was too late by that point, though.

The last hundred kilometres of the trip was on an unsealed road. It was well-tended enough to tear along, but from time to time Macca would swear and break suddenly. Towards the end of the trip he slowed and called back to us, "Hey, look!"

In front of the car was a flock of emus travelling at their own pace across the orange road. I shook Sam; she shouldn't miss them. "Sam?" While she was stirring, I held her camera up and recorded them. I had expected them to be fearful of the car as we slowly rolled past them, but they had quite the opposite reaction. One of them wound up and ran at us, mouth open and head low. It was making the most awful sound.

"Whoa!" Macca said, and stopped completely.

It arrived at our windshield with the feathers on its neck completely fluffed so it looked more like some sort of yeti than a bird. Then, it opened its deep mouth so wide we could see down its throat and made a sound in the swell of its neck that sounded like someone thumping on a box.

That woke Sam up. "What on…" she said, rubbing her eyes. "Oh, my God!" She sat back against the seat, and then repeated, "Oh, my God, that's awesome!" She took the camera from me and zoomed in on it.

At the window beside us, another pair of eyes appeared and considered us. The window was only open an inch, but Sam took one look into the beady eyes and shut it completely.

"Just F.Y.I.," Macca said, turning to us. "Everything in Australia wants to kill you. Everything."

"Thanks for the warning," I said, watching the Emu bounce around aggressively and flourish its neck feathers at us.

Just then, Sam shrieked. "Amanda!"

Amanda looked alarmed. "What?"

"I swear to God I just saw a spider on your neck, under your hair!" She had her camera pointing at Amanda, despite Amanda's earlier threat that she'd sue us for any footage that ended up on telly. "I think it ran into your collar!"

Amanda didn't even check, relaxing back into her seat. "I'm sure I'll be fine." Leaning boredly against the backrest, she watched the emu dancing around the front bumper as if she'd seen it a million times before.

Sam looked completely confused. "Aren't all the spiders poisonous here, though?" she asked me. "Why would she not care?"

I didn't really have an explanation. "Maybe she thought you were messing with her?"

Sam didn't look convinced. "We're pretty far from a hospital," she muttered. "I'd at least want to double-check to make sure I wasn't being messed with…" She shivered, and then began to search around in her own clothing for spiders. When she was done she got started on me.

Meanwhile, Macca was leaning on the horn to try and get rid of the aggressive emu. Eventually we were able to drive on.

I wasn't sure what I'd been expecting the blockade to look like, but I hadn't seen that many people on telly. What we arrived at looking something between a college fair day and a commune. There must have been hundreds of people there.

There was so many people, in fact, we had to park quite a bit up the road from where everyone had pitched their tents and walk the rest of the way to it. We even passed a truck with ten Porta Loos on the back of it and a queue for them spreading out onto the road.

I was looking at them, and Macca explained, "Never host a blockade without food, booze and loos."

Sam tugged on my arm as we walked past a media van with a big red seven painted on the side of it and a dish mounted on top. There was another one, as well, but the logo was more obscure. "You'll be right at home," I said to her, and pointed further up to where I could see a man with a camera on his shoulder talking to some other media professionals. "Look, a great big EFP. I wonder if he'll let you touch it."

She laughed, grabbing my arm as she exaggerated her reaction. "Stop, you're turning me on."

Jammas was walking near us and hadn't actually heard what I'd said, only what Sam had. Boy, did he give us an odd look. I wondered if I'd even need to spell out the relationship between Sam and I to him.

We'd arrived at the tent city before I realised that Amanda had disappeared. I wasn't that disappointed, actually. She probably had a great deal of knowledge of the area that I'd really like to pick her brains over, but she was just insufferable. I couldn't possibly have done anything to her that would justify her behaviour toward us. It really was a pity, though. I very rarely came across other female archaeologists that had similar interests to me, especially younger ones.

Macca gestured out over the sea of tents. "Pitch anywhere," he said, "preferably on flat ground or the road because that makes it harder for Frost to pass us." He pointed over at a plume of smoke that was further down the hill. "That's the kitchen, you saw the loos. I've got some stuff to do, but can you find me later? I want to talk about what you're going to say to the news. Thanks for doing this, again. You rock."

He gave me a collegial pat on the back and then he and Jammas walked off somewhere. Various people greeted him as he went. I was pleased to see that some of them were clearly Aboriginal. My heart leapt. I wanted to rush over and talk to them about the area, but in a way that didn't look horribly tokenistic and patronising. Perhaps I'd have more opportunity to meet them later. I watched him go.

Sam was filming out over the tents. "This is amazing," she said. "There's signs everywhere. Don't do this, don't do that, camp here please, don't leave your valuables unattended… There's even trash cans."

"I think Macca's the one who organised it," I said, with new respect for him.

"Well, it's pretty well organised," Sam said. She was looking at something, so I followed her line of sight and saw a St Johns Ambulance crew relaxing on deck chairs near their van.

Ahead of the camp, the road bent to skirt around what looked like an enormous rocky hill. The ridge of the hill stretched along the horizon, but the apex of it was casting a long shadow on the camp. It loomed over the tent city, dwarfing it. It was so vast that even just looking up at it made me dizzy.

"That must be Windjana Gorge," I said. "It's supposed to have some beautiful caves."

Sam was still looking at the screen, but she sounded amused. "Gee, I wonder what we're doing later," she said. "Although, you have an awful dilemma, now." She paused for effect. "Whether we go snoop around the empty mine site or go spelunking in some more 'beautiful' caves. Maybe we can find cave-thing a girlfriend."

I laughed shortly, shifting the weight of the pack. "Well, I think I'm going to have to hang around for the cameras for now," I said. "Shall we put the tent up?"

Sam looked longingly towards the cameraman I'd pointed out before, but he still appeared to be deep in conversation. I supposed she decided it could wait until later. "Okay."

We found a spot on the outskirts of the main city and a little into the scrubland. After Sam had beat around the sand for several minutes and was absolutely certain it was safe – "They have these snakes that cover themselves in sand and just lie there waiting to attack you!" – she helped me pitch the tent.

I always loved crawling inside after it was up. There was something really comforting about lying there in your own little room that created the illusion we were perfectly safe. I took my sleeping back out of my pack and unrolled it, lying on top of it as Sam took a peek at what clothes I'd packed for her.

"I love this top," she said, holding up a white t-shirt. "I have a feeling it's not going to stay white for too long, though." She looked down at her hiking boots, which were already covered in a fine sheen of orange dust.

"At least you can bleach white," I pointed out.

"I haven't worn this one for ages," she said, shaking out a grey tank top. "I wonder if it still looks good." Without any warning, she pulled off the t-shirt she was wearing, revealing a very inappropriate bra. It really suited her, but wasn't going to offer her anything in the way of support. I had a brief vivid memory of Sam walking around the hotel room in that tiny bikini with her breasts bouncing everywhere. My cheeks felt hot.

She caught me looking. "Like it?" she asked me, looking mischievous.

"I didn't see you put that on," I said. "And yes, I do." What was in it, at least.

She abandoned the grey singlet and stepped one leg over me, sitting across my hips. "Want a closer look?"

I curled my hands around her hips. Then, because I knew she loved it, I flipped her onto her back and lay between her bent knees. "That's much better," I said and kissed the crease between her breasts. "I can see all detail from here." I slipped a hand underneath the offending item and Sam exhaled at length, relaxing back.

"Can I come in?" a tiny voice with a strong accent said from the doorway.

"Shit!" Sam hissed, and then hurriedly put her hand over her mouth. It was obviously a child's voice. She made a grab for her t-shirt as I quickly scrambled off her.

The little girl had already crawled into the tent without waiting for us to answer her. She had dark brown skin and black hair which was ratty and obviously overdue for a wash. I would have thought she was no more than four if I hadn't heard her speak. A four year old didn't speak that clearly – at least, I didn't think they did. I hadn't really had extensive experience with young children.

Sam held her t-shirt across her chest. "Hello, Sweetie," she said, sounding a lot less flustered than she looked. "Won't your parents be wondering where you are?"

"My parents don't live here," she said, sitting herself neatly on the edge of my sleeping bag and picking up Sam's abandoned tank top.

"Do they live nearby?" Sam asked.

"They live in the Spirit World," she said as confidently as if she were telling us which suburb they lived in. She lay the tank top out in front of her and smoothed it carefully out. "This is pretty," she said. "I like the pictures."

Sam and I looked at each other. A rock settled in the pit of my stomach. "My parents live there, too," I told her.

She thought about that for a few moments, and then turned her attention back to the top. "What are the pictures of?" she asked, crawling over and inviting herself into my lap.

Sam looked from me to the girl, and then reached over and picked up her camera.

I raised an eyebrow at Sam. To the little girl, I stretched the fabric and had to actually look closely to figure it out myself. "This one looks like a feather," I said.

"From which bird?"

I looked at Sam. Ornithology wasn't really my area. Sam just grinned at me and kept the camera steady. In the end, I just made it up. "I think it comes from a pigeon," I said. "Do you know what a pigeon is?"

She looked up at me. "Everyone knows who Pigeon is," she said. I didn't really understand what she meant. "Can I put it on?"

I helped her put it on over her dusty t-shirt. She looked down reverently at the tank top which was so long on her it reached her knees.

Sam quickly put her own top back on. "What's your name, Sweetie?"

She looked up. "Blanket," she said.

We both squinted at her. Her accent made it difficult to tell if she was saying an English word or an Aboriginal word that I'd misunderstood. "Blanket?" I repeated for clarification. "Like, this?" I touched the sleeping bag.

She nodded. "Like Michael Jackson," she said. "I can do the dance. Want to see?"

"Okay," I said automatically, because what other answer was there?

She immediately began to do her best rendition of Thriller, complete with the whole zombie shuffling. Watching the total concentration on her little face was absolutely hilarious. About halfway through it, Sam started to giggle and couldn't stop. She put a hand over her mouth again and I could see her trying to compose herself so as not to offend Blanket.

At the end, when she imitated the evil laughter, Sam made a terrifying noise that was a result of a full minute of smothering hysterical laughter.

Blanket stopped. "It's not funny," she told Sam indignantly. "It's scary."

"I'm sorry," Sam said, trying to look as much. "I was thinking about something else, I promise."

"That was a nice dance," I said to the girl. "Very scary."

"I'm going to be a dancer," she said. "I'm going to wear this today, too." Without even waiting for us to answer her again, she crawled out of the tent and ran off.

We sat there in silence for a moment. Sam put the camera down. "I guess I'm not going to try that top on today," she said. "What a cutie, though. It's sad about her parents. I wonder who looks after her?"

"I suppose we can ask her when we get your top back later."

Sam didn't look very concerned, holding the camera up and reviewing the footage. "I don't even really care about the top. It kind of looked like she could use a new one, anyway, even if it's big enough on her to be a dress." She stopped playback, tilting her head as she considered the screen. "You know, it would look totally cute with a little belt."

I had to laugh at that. "I swear, Sam, you'd have a baby just so you could dress it up."

She grinned, still looking at the LCD. "Well, technically I'd have a baby just to shut Dad up. Getting to dress something in adorable clothes is just an added benefit."

I knew she was only half-joking. Kids, I thought. I couldn't imagine how I'd ever have them if I was going to do this sort of thing for a living. I wasn't sure how Sam was going to reconcile it to herself, either. She'd had more nannies and carers than anyone I'd ever met and been constantly shunted around by parents who had other priorities. She couldn't do that to her own child, could she? I couldn't imagine she would be able to, but then again I couldn't imagine her being able to sideline her passions and obsessions for long enough to take care of a child.

"Do you really want children?"

She put the camera down beside her. "Want?" She shrugged. "I don't know, I guess. I can't really ask myself that question, though, because Dad will kill me if I'm where 'Nishimura' stops." She watched me closely, though, reflecting on my question. "You don't," she said carefully. "You used to."

I lay back on the sleeping bag. "I don't know," I said, folding my arms behind my head. "I just assumed I would, because that's what happens, isn't it? You meet a nice man, you get married and then you have children."

Sam leant over me. "You still can, you know," she said. "Thanks to the marvels of modern reproductive technology. You could carry my child or something. That way we'd both be mothers."

I must have looked horrified at the thought of being pregnant. "Can we worry about this in about fifteen years?" I pleaded. "Or maybe twenty?"

"Your expression," she said, laughing. She lay down next to me. "I always worry what it would turn out like, you know?" she said. "Like, what if I give up everything to take care of my child and it hates me? What if it turns out like Amanda or something?"

I snorted, slipping my arm underneath her neck.

"Oh, God," she said, scrunching up her face as she ran with that thought. "Sick-looking, anti-social and a total bitch. What a nightmare. Maybe we should have two so we have a back-up plan."

"Could be worse," I said. "At least she's clearly intelligent, and she's an archaeologist so she can't be that bad." I was smiling.

Sam turned her head toward me. "You like her," she accused me.

I made a noise. "Not at all," I said. "Just pointing out it could be worse. She could be, I don't know, one of those crazy reality show directors." I wagged my eyebrows at Sam and she pretended to throttle me, and then kissed my cheek.

"We don't do this as much as we used to," Sam said at last, much more soberly than I was used to hearing her speak. "I love just talking about crap with you." She turned her head to me. "Happy three months."

Something about what she said broke my heart, and I couldn't figure out what it was. She didn't say anything else. We just regarded each other at length while I tried to figure out what I'd done wrong.

It was almost a relief when a second voice said out the front of our tent, "Knock, knock?" and then hesitated. "Kind of ironic I'm saying that to a tent flap. It's me." 'Me' sounded like Macca. "I have some great news."

We sat up, looking towards the doorway. "You can come in," I said.

He didn't actually come in, but he did peel the flap back. "Hi," he said. "I hope you guys weren't trying to nap."

I shook my head. "How did you find us?"

He scoffed. "Dude, you're Lara Croft. I just asked people where you'd pitched," he said. "Anyway, I was talking to the ABC about getting a full interview with you, me and maybe one of the Bunuba elders and they said they'd had a call from Frost's PR rep." He was recounting the story like juicy gossip, and it was actually rather endearing. "Anyway, I'm reasonably good mates with one of ABC's scheduler and so I accidentally acquired Frost's PR rep's number and called it."

"Accidentally," Sam said, just to be clear.

He flashed her a grin. "Of course," he said. "Slip of the fingers. So the PR rep answered and I pretended to be a scheduler and invited the Frost twins to appear alongside us for an in-depth discussion of mining in the locale. He said no, of course, but wanted the number of the protest organiser to double-check something." Macca was getting more and more excited. "Ten minutes later I received a call and it was Diane fucking Frost, and she wants to meet with you before you appear on the news and mobilise your millions of fans against her."

Chills washed over me even at the mention of her name. Frost, I thought, how apt. "So I just need to meet with her?"

He nodded. "I'm coming. I'll do most of the talking. You just have to show up and be famous."

"I'm coming, too," Sam said. "But I suppose she won't let me film it, right?"

"I won't let you film it," Macca said, still with the wide grin. "Just in case I 'accidentally' kill her for destroying so many beautiful natural environments to add a few extra zeros to her bank account."

Sam and I both just stared at him. He was getting those same feelings I was about Diane Frost?

The grin faded. "I was kidding," he said, but I couldn't tell if he was telling the truth or not. "I don't know what happened to my Y chromosome. These muscles are a lie, I can't even step on a spider. Anyway, there's no way the twins would let you film any sort of confidential discussion." He paused, looking smug. "If they know you're doing it, that is."

Sam exhaled, looking charmed. "You must do this stuff all the time," she said. "You're good."

I looked across at her and raised my eyebrows, but she deliberately didn't make eye-contact with me.

"Aren't you the media guru?" he asked. "I'm sure there's plenty you could teach me about how to work people."

This was too much. I didn't even understand why she was doing it, although obviously there was some purpose other than to upset me. "When is this meeting?" I asked Macca, interrupting them.

He looked surprised by my tone. "Tomorrow," he said. "Ten a.m., they'll chopper us out of here onto the mine site. Meet you down the back at nine-thirty?"

Well, I'd come this far. I nodded.


	12. Chapter 12

We really had to hand it to Macca. I wasn't sure exactly what they'd taught him his degree, but whatever it was must have included several classes on how to manage large crowds of activists.

Instead of letting drunk people wander around in the dark hundreds of kilometres away from the closest police station, he'd organised entertainment. On one side of the blockade near the media vans a group of Aboriginal men were stripping down to loin clothes and painting each other with white stripes. Sam and I stood and watched them with interest for a few minutes.

While they were getting ready, a crowd was forming around them and us and it made me nervous. I couldn't very well go hide in my tent, though, because I wanted desperately to learn more about the local culture and spirituality. I was sure if I better understood their beliefs it would go some distance toward explaining what Sam and I were experiencing.

As I was examining all the different faces in the crowd, many of them smiled at me. Well, that was better than staring and whispering, I thought. I smiled back. Among the people gathering around the performers, there was a notable absence of the children; I supposed they were all in bed. I wondered if Blanket was somewhere sleeping peacefully in Sam's grey singlet. It was a sweet mental image.

Sam leaned over to me and whispered, "Do you think they'd mind if I filmed them?"

I shrugged and gestured for her to go ask the performers herself.

When she got the courage to walk into the clearing and introduce herself, one of them pointed at me. "Hey, you!" he called. I stood up straighter, surprised. "You're that Lara girl!" The crowd parted for him as he came over and shook my hand. When he let go, there was white chalk paste all over my palm.

It was hard to see him properly in the twilight, but up close I thought he might be in his late teens. He was still skinny and he had a big, wide grin. "I like your movie," he said. He was speaking with the same accent as Blanket had. "You must like stories, hey?" I nodded. He puffed out his chest and gestured at the other performers. "Me and my brothers here, we're going to tell you the story about the Kookaburra. Maybe you could put it in your next movie, okay?"

They hadn't minded us filming at all; quite the opposite. So, we stood around with the gathering crowd watching them finish applying their costumes. Before they started, they lit a large fire so everyone could see them.

I hadn't realised I was still surveying the crowd until Sam took my hand and smiled up at me. I smiled back and wiped some of the chalk paste from my hand onto her the tip of her nose. She couldn't do anything about it because I had one of her hands and the other was in the camera strap. She just scrunched up her nose went cross-eyed trying to look at it. I chuckled.

The performance was more than just music and dance; the boy who'd come up to me was also the narrator and he was a bit of a show pony. He introduced everyone to each of the troupe and then pointed to the older man at the back. "He's Old Johnson," the boy said. "And he's a grumpy old man." The crowd laughed. "He's also the only man allowed to make the sound of the Kookaburra. It's a special sound, you see. Only special people can make it. But Old Johnson is so grumpy, even Kookaburra is afraid of him!"

Old Johnson _was_ old; he had a long greying beard and a brow so heavy it nearly covered his eyes. He stood up and pretended to look around the crowd until he spotted the narrator. "You!" he shouted, and then then took off his boot and threw it at him. "You respect your elders!" The boy pretended to hide behind a person at the front of the crowd. Old Johnson shook his head and went back to sitting up the back of the group.

I saw him pick up a long, hollow branch covered in intricate and colourful designs and put it to his mouth. Embedded in some of the patterns, I noticed spirals similar to those on the painting I'd copied from the cave. That piqued my interest. The branch itself, that was probably a didgeridoo. Confirming what I'd suspected, Old Johnson made a barking noise with it and all the brothers pretended to jump in surprise.

"You see? Everyone is afraid of him. Even the spirits are," the boy said, coming to stand in the centre of the cleared area again. From there, he began to launch into a story about how the spirits were awoken in the Dreamtime, and how that was like the Kookaburra waking up the sun.

It was very entertaining, partly because all the performers were very charismatic, and partly because I'd never seen anything quite like it. Their dancing and percussion _was_ somewhat reminiscent of some of the performances Sam and I had seen when we'd been in Africa, but there was something else in their display. These men were so cheeky, so mischievous. There was so much life and energy in their performance it was impossible to not be engaged by them. At one point, one of them was standing up explaining why his colleague was a terrible brother and relating it to a fable about the bush chicken. The 'bad' brother faced us and put his finger to his lips, and then went a got a bucket of water and threw it sideways so it splashed against the speaker.

The crowd laughed – even Sam did – but my smiled faded immediately and I just stared at them. I had a very vivid memory of being splashed with water after I'd ripped up that sacred design. Around me everyone was laughing, just as they had been when I'd been standing drenched on the pavement. It was chilling.

When the performance was over, Sam took one look at my expression and said, "Alcohol, stat." She grabbed my hand, towing me toward the kitchen area. I looked back at the performers; the audience were mingling with them and talking. If I could get the boy alone I might be able to ask him more about the spirits he was telling us stories about. He might even know what the thing haunting us might be.

In the cooking area, Macca was hard at work supervising some of his volunteers handing out beer cans to people with IDs. Sam held up the front of her t-shirt like a basket. "Fill it up," she told him.

"What was that? Pour beer all over that white t-shirt?" he said, opening a can and pretending to be about to pour it onto her. "Sure!" She just laughed and pried the can from him. I watched their hands touch.

"Lara needs a lot of alcohol," Sam jerked her thumb at me. "Do you have anything stronger than beer?"

"Beer's fine," I said shortly. "What is it?"

"VB," he answered, offering me one. I took it from him and managed not to throw it at his face. "I got a good price. Plus it has the added benefit of being so disgusting people won't actually drink that much of it." He inclined his head to the cooking area. "There's probably some meat left if you want it. I'd cook it a bit more before eating it, though, it's been out for a while."

Sam smiled coyly at him as he handed her another beer, and then she glanced at me. I gave her a long stare, but she looked away in the middle of it and followed Macca's directions to the food.

The meat was attached to the in-tact carcass of a cow and was sizzling away on dimly glowing coals. Parts of its flesh had been hacked off, but its head wasn't actually on the fire and just stared at us from underneath long lashes. Its eyes were clouded.

"Oh, my God," Sam said, forgetting whatever she was playing at with Macca. She spent a few seconds filming it. "It's looking at me, and it's judging me for being about to eat it."

I wasn't as disturbed by it as Sam was. I threw back the remainder of the beer in my can and gave it to her as I walked up to the fire. Taking out my pocket knife, I cut along the muscle in the rump, and then pried the meat free with the very tips of my fingers, hissing, "Ouch, ouch!" I dropped the chunk of meat on the naked coals and poked it around a bit with the tip of the blade. When I was sure it was cooked through, I speared it with the knife and presented it to Sam.

She gaped at me. "That was so totally _Survivor_ ," she said, and took a bite out of the meat with her mouth. I would have made her take a few more bites, but she spotted something over my shoulder and completely forgot about the food. "Oh, it's that guy!" she said. "The one with the EFP camera. I'll be right back, I promise."

She rushed off and I watched her stop the man as he was walking somewhere. They were too far away for me to hear what they were saying, but I think he was complimenting her. However, unlike her conversations with Macca, she wasn't having any of it. She said something, winced at him and then pointed at me. I thought her lips might have said, "That's her." I waved at them, and they both waved back. The cameraman looked disappointed.

I should have been happy she was obviously telling him she was taken, but on the other hand it just complicated everything. If it was so easy for her to tell _him_ she was taken, why was she _not_ telling Macca and flirting with him in front of me? It wasn't fair, I'd never do that to her. A rock formed in the pit of my stomach as I watched her gossip with the cameraman.

He'd actually asked about her handheld, and it looked like she was scrolling through some features as they had their heads together watching the LCD. She always looked so serious and professional when she was deep in discussion about features of various media equipment. I loved watching her. I would have enjoyed it a lot more, though, if I wasn't so upset about that smile she'd given Macca.

"Tomb Raider!" someone said from beside me, and then giggled. I turned my head, and found myself face to face with a group of three teenagers. They were drinking, and since Macca was insisting on IDs I assumed they weren't minors. Two of them were girls and they were pushing the boy forward. "Hi," he said, and then went bright red. The girls rolled their eyes and continued to giggle.

"Hello," I said, feeling rather uncomfortable.

When the boy didn't say anything else, one of the girls said, "He just has a torrent of _Tomb Raider_ , but he says it's so awesome you're here trying to help us that he's going to buy a real copy." The boy looked like he might actually die of embarrassment. I felt awful for him, and even more so as his friend added, "Also he thinks you're _really_ hot."

"Shut up!" he hissed and elbowed her.

"Thank you," I said, carefully avoiding three quarters of what she'd. "And it's my pleasure to be here."

The boy managed to escape, mumbling something about needing more beer and the girls followed him. I watched them go. It was such an odd feeling to look at a total stranger and know that they'd thought about me _like that._ I looked down at myself, wondering what the big deal was. It wasn't as if I was one of those girls who thought they were ugly – I knew I wasn't – but I didn't see anything particularly exceptional about my appearance. I always assumed I was rather average and that had always been enough for me. There were a great deal more important things to spend my energy worrying about. The fact that I'd just been dragged four thousand kilometres by some supernatural force who apparently wanted me to brutally murder someone, for example. Or, Sam flirting with Macca. I frowned again.

Why would she _do_ that? Was she trying to make me jealous? Was she genuinely flirting with him to make some point I didn't understand? Or, worst of all, was she actually interested in him?

"Lara!" Sam's voice called, and I looked up at her. She'd managed to sweet talk the cameraman into letting her put his camera on her own shoulder. "I'm holding a _Betacam_!"

I didn't know what the significance of that was, but Sam looked like she was about to explode with joy so I called back, "Suits you!" as pleasantly as I could. My chest felt unbearably heavy, and I had a sudden thought about what would happen if she hooked up with Macca right here in the blockade and I was left sleeping in our tent alone. What would happen to our beautiful new house if we broke up? What would happen to _me_?

She was just getting back into a discussion again when I felt someone strike my back. It echoed through my ribs and unfortunately I still had the pocket knife in my hand. Within half a second, it was against someone's throat and my heart was pounding.

The man who had struck me turned out to be middle aged, and his kind eyes were watching me with abject terror. "I'm sorry!" he said desperately, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hurt you! I was just trying to give you a friendly old pat on the back for supporting a good cause!"

I lowered the knife and stepped back from him, just _horrified_ with myself. What had I nearly done to an innocent man? In the process of backing away, I almost fell over a deckchair and directly into the fire with the dead cow.

The man looked like he wanted to take a step toward and help me catch my balance, but he didn't. His eyes kept moving between my face and my pocket knife. I stowed the blade and slipped it back in my pocket with shaking hands.

"Are you alright?" he asked, looking genuinely concerned. "Jesus, I'm really sorry. Fuck, that was stupid, wasn't it?"

I shook my head dismissively, waving my hand to show him I was alright. Well, of course _I_ was alright, I hadn't just had a _knife pulled on me_. I had just been so deep in thought, brooding about Sam that I hadn't— Oh, God. That was too close.

I finally managed to gather some composure. "No, I'm so sorry," I said. "God, I really am. I hope I didn't hurt you. I don't handle surprises very well."

He smiled warmly at me. "I don't know my own strength," he said, holding out his big hand to me. "Forgive me?"

"Only if you forgive me."

I shook his hand and he chuckled, despite what had happened. "Well, at least I have a great story to tell my mates," he said. "Lara Croft nearly took my head off! So, can I get you another beer? You look like you need to chill out." I shook my head, and he nodded. "I get the hint. See you, then. Good on your for supporting us." I watched him head off to wherever he'd originally been going.

When he was gone, I exhaled. I hadn't realised I was so on edge until that moment, but now that I focused on the feeling, it was similar to what I'd originally felt in the hotel room. I couldn't decide what was affecting me more: the presence, or Sam's behaviour. Regardless of what it was, though, I probably shouldn't be around crowds of people until I'd managed to sort my head out.

Sam was engrossed in a serious conversation about the Betacam; I didn't want to bother them. I wasn't even sure I wanted to be around Sam right now. Well, that wasn't true – of course I did, I always wanted to be around her. But I didn't want to see anymore of her flirting and I wanted to pretend it had just never happened. Maybe I could go for a run or something so I could think. Actually, that was a great idea.

I headed out of the blockade camp and onto the road on the other side of it. As soon as I was clear of tents, I broke into a sprint.

I ran along the road for some distance, enjoying the feeling of my muscles working together and the warm breeze on my face. It was dark and I couldn't see any details about the road, but that just made me feel like I was running faster than I probably was. I pushed myself just a little harder, revelling in the burn in my legs. It was actually a really pleasant feeling; I had so much energy I felt like I might be able to climb all the way to the top of the Gorge. I thought the better of it, though, because it was dark and I didn't have a headlamp with me.

It wasn't very long before I'd worked off all the excess adrenaline and I slowed to a halt, leaning my hands on my knees and panting. There was real clarity in feeling completely exhausted.

I turned and looked behind me to see how far I'd run. In the distance, I heard the drone of many conversations blending together, with the occasional shout and shriek of laughter. Lights from various sources moved around the camp. Behind everything was the glow of a large bonfire and the sound of drums as people experimented with them.

Around me, though, it was almost silent. I heard the rustle of leaves blowing in the breeze and the sound of my own breathing.

It was at that point that I became aware of a deep rumbling coming from the gorge. It was a sound that was hidden well in between the hum of distant conversations and the breeze blowing my hair around my ears. I turned my head toward the gorge, trying to figure out what it was. When I couldn't, I decided to investigate.

I had no idea about the terrain between the road and the gorge, and the only light I had on me was my mobile. I didn't really want to waste the battery, though, because although I was sure Macca would have organised for some sort of recharge station I suspected there would be stiff competition for it.

Hoping I wouldn't come across anything that wanted to kill me, I squinted and moved through the brush using only the moonlight to assist me. As I approached the river and the cliffs rising beside it, the humming sound became louder, but I was still unable to identify it.

The entrance to the main gorge was a long sand bank on the side of the river. The water was almost still, but I didn't fancy the idea of swimming through it, so I walked along the sandy edge. As I the bushland disappeared behind me and was walking between two widely spaced cliffs, the details of the sound became even more difficult to distinguish. The cliffs were feeding soundwaves to each other and every time the sound bounced the echoes were harder to place.

I couldn't tell where the sound was coming from at all, even though I was standing right here and probably really close to it. I stood in place, turning and tilting my ears in various directions, but I couldn't pinpoint it.

Just while I was worrying that it might be something to do with the cave-thing and that it might actually be coming from nowhere, it stopped. Someone laughed, and then it made a barking noise like I'd heard Old Johnson make in the performance.

"Girl!" a voice called to me. It echoed several times on the rock face. I saw the owner of the voice when he turned to me; his face had the white chalk on it and white strips like ribs walked toward me from where he'd been standing on a boulder in the centre of the sand.

Without the strange music, there was an eerie silence in the gorge.

I recognised the player by his long grey beard before he spoke again. It was Old Johnson with his didgeridoo and a half-full orange juice container. He was bare-chested and bare-foot, but had put a pair of ordinary jeans on. It was an odd contrast with the rest of him. He laughed again, not sounding at all grumpy. "Girl, why are you here?" he said, again sounding anything but grumpy, "Don't you know that this place is full of crocodiles?"

I looked apprehensively at the dark, still water. "I'll be alright."

I think he was impressed, but it was difficult to tell under his facial hair and chalk paste. "What did you come here for?"

I pointed to his didgeridoo. "I didn't know what the sound was so I came to find out. I hope I didn't disturb you."

He shook his head. "No," he said. He regarded me at length, and took a mouthful from the container he was holding. "Have this," he said, holding it out to me after he'd finished. "Not like your beer. This is our booze, this stuff."

I looked at the bottle on the end of his outstretched arm, not sure if in their culture it was impolite to refuse. In the end, I took the bottle and drank from it, hoping it wouldn't make me go blind. It didn't, but what it did do was burn my throat so badly I actually gagged. He chuckled. "I told you: good stuff!"

I wasn't sure about his assessment, but it certainly was strong. He flicked his wrist at the bottle. "You take the rest. I got plenty at home." While I was recovering, he turned the didgeridoo over in his hands. "I just come out here because this will be gone soon," he said, looking at the cliffs. "I played here since I was a boy. I learnt to play here, on this sand." He shook his head, his brow even lower than it usually was. "My boys learnt to play here. Their boys, too. But not anymore. Soon it will be dust."

"I didn't know they were going to mine inside the gorge," I said. "I thought it was ten kilometres from here? Perhaps it will be safe."

He shook his head. "They are always like this," he said. "They say one place and then after the government lets them, they mine all the places. Argyle was like this. Now Windjana will be like this. I know what they're after in the rocks here. They don't even know what they'll find."

"What will they find?" My skin prickled as I asked the question.

He smiled humourlessly, watching me stroke my bare arms. "I think you found it already," he said. "Or it found you first."

I could feel him looking at me, even though it was difficult to see. He actually walked slowly all the way around me. The sand we were standing on was slightly wet and the moonlight shone everywhere except his footprints.

"Now I got a question," he said when he was around at my front again. "What's a white girl doing with all them spirits hanging around?"

"You can see it?" I asked, feeling my heart flutter. Someone who knew about what was happening! "Wait, there's more than one?"

"Hah!" he said, and then gestured at me to drink more. I followed his advice. "Yeah, more than one," he said. "You'll see."

I wanted to ask him so much more, but he turned away from me and put the didgeridoo to his mouth. After a moment, he started to play it. The sounds filled up the silence in the gorge again.

Some of the rhythms he was making with it resonated so deeply that I could feel them in my ribs and in my skull. Each time he made a different noise with it, a bark, or a wail or some other sound, it echoed off the cliff face sometimes up to several seconds later. It was surreal, as if the very rocks were shouting back to him.

After a few minutes of listening to him and wishing Sam were here to see this, I began to feel sick. At first, I thought it was just the regular nausea of having drunk a little too much too fast, but it quickly escalated. I put my hand on my stomach and went to say something to Old Johnson, but he was facing away from me and immersed in the music he was making.

God, I hoped I wouldn't throw up on this lovely clean sand. As I looked down at it, my breath caught. It was so clean and the moon was so bright that it looked like the same diamonds I'd seen on the beach at Broome. It couldn't be real, I must be hallucinating. I bent down to take a handful of them, and just like cut diamonds the pebbles ran through my fingers as I sifted the ground.

I _must_ be hallucinating, I thought, looking at the orange juice bottle Old Johnson had given me and wondering exactly what it was brewed with. Perhaps some sort of Australian mushrooms filled with potent toxins?

I stood back up. The wind had picked up in the gorge, and I could feel it rush down between the cliffs and past me, blowing my hair all over the place. I fussed with my hair, trying to keep it out of my eyes. When I managed to get most of it tucked into my ponytail, I happened to catch sight of Old Johnson.

His jeans and his hair were perfectly still.

While I was staring at him, my pulse beginning to race. Someone's fingertips pushed the last few strands of hair behind my ears. I felt more than I heard someone whisper very close to my ear, "Follow me." There was no one else around me. I felt so ill and I was so scared that I obeyed the voice.

Nothing was leading me and no one took my hand, but I knew the direction I was supposed to walking in. I moved slowly, frightened I would throw up if I jolted my stomach.

As I walked, I felt the grains of the sparkling sand slip up between my toes even though I was wearing boots. I looked behind me, but there were no footsteps. It was as if I'd never stood on that beach with Old Johnson. I must have been, though, because I could hear the warbling of his didgeridoo so clearly that sometimes it almost sounded like it was coming from inside my skull.

By the time I reached the edge of the gorge and the route I'd arrived by, I wasn't completely sure where I ended and the landscape began. The water felt as if it were part of me and when I bent down to touch it, it was as if I were dissolving into its depths. Around the edges of the water crocodiles lazed, not even paying one scrap of attention to me. I went right up to one and touched it; it twitched, but didn't move.

Everything was _breathing_. The plants, the rocks. They all seemed to be drawing deep breaths, expanding and contracting with each one.

I stood on the edge of the gorge, looking back into it. It was empty: Old Johnson was nowhere to be seen. The riverbed was covered in the sparkling diamonds, like the broken scales from my dream.

Someone collided with me and screamed. That shocked me enough for me to return at least somewhat to reality. I spun around, finding Sam. I could have cried with relief to see her; I didn't even care about Macca. She even had our torch in her hands.

Sam looked directly into my eyes for several seconds before she said, "God, Lara, it's _you!_ Where did you come from, I didn't see you! Someone said you'd run off this way and I was so worried that..." her voice trailed off as she got a good look at me. She put her arms on either of my shoulders and gave me the once over with the torchlight. "Wow, how much did you drink? You look _terrible!_ "

I was shaking. "I feel terrible," I said, and then noticed she was only wearing her bikini top with her trousers. She was also covered in the white chalk paint. "What…?"

She looked down at herself. "Oh, right," she said. "The performers were teaching us about what all this means," she said, spinning around to show me. "It's pretty interesting, it's a shame you weren't there."

There were stripes on her back, too. I didn't even want to ask the question but I couldn't help myself. "Did you do those?"

She looked a little guilty. "Macca did," she said. My stomach dropped, but I was too distracted to say anything about it. She would probably have said more herself, but she spotted the bottle in my hand. "Is that what you're drinking?" she asked.

I hadn't even remembered that I was holding it, and after Old Johnson had disappeared, I wasn't completely sure anyone but me would be able to see it. It was a relief she could. "I think I've been poisoned," I said. "Or drugged, or something. God, I…" I exhaled. "I think I'm hallucinating, but I'm not sure." The didgeridoo was still playing. "Can you hear that?" I asked her. "The playing?"

She didn't even need to check. "Yeah, of course," she said. "That's not hallucinating."

I could still feel the breeze warm against my neck. At least Sam's clothes were moving with it. "Old Johnson said the thing that's following us isn't an 'it', it's a 'them'. Spirits." I could still feel then around me. "I think I have to go somewhere with them."

Sam looked surprised. "Now?" she asked, and I nodded.

She was lost in thought for a moment, her eyes glazed as she watched me. Then , suddenly, snatched the bottle from me and poured the rest of it down her throat so quickly that I couldn't stop her. Just in case I tried to, she had her hand extended between us to prevent me from succeeding.

"Sam!" I said, "Didn't you hear me? I have no idea what's in that, it could be poisonous!"

She wiped her mouth, even her eyes watering from the strength of it. "I heard you. If you're poisoned, so am I," she said hoarsely. "Whoa, that's gross. So where are we going?"

I stared at her a moment, unable to believe the gravity of what she'd just done. She had _no_ idea what was in that bottle except that it had made me extremely ill. Then, she'd drunk it.

"Lara? Which way?"

I tried to focus on her question, but I wasn't sure how to answer it her. As I was trying to explain my feeling of needing to go in a specific direction, I saw movement on the opposite side of the gorge where I had been headed. Because the whole landscape was pulsing, at first I couldn't be certain I _did_ see something. I squinted at where I thought I'd seen the slender figure, and then I caught sight of the moonlight shining off a head of white-blond hair. Something inside me surged toward her.

Amanda. Where on earth was she sneaking off to at this hour? She wasn't heading for the didgeridoo music, she was going somewhere else.

"There," I said, pointing at her and keeping my finger raised until I was certain Sam had seen her. "I'm willing to place money on that being the way we're supposed to go."


	13. Chapter 13

God, I… I was all over the place. I don't know what I would have done if Sam hadn't been there. I probably would have tried to follow Amanda, anyway, but I'm not certain I wouldn't just have toppled off the side of the gorge. Or maybe I'd have been swept away in the river, or been one of the first people in Western Australia to actually manage to get themselves eaten by a freshwater crocodile. Without her, I could completely see myself crawling along the ground, feeling at any moment as if I might lose my mind.

Once I'd spotted Amanda, at least the whispering and the sensation of being pushed in a particular direction stopped. Sam's presence distracted me from the other residual effects; things darting around in my peripheral vision and the sense that the reality in front of me was melting away and soon the 'real' world would be revealed.

Sam was lucid for long enough to help me through the worst of whatever Old Johnson had given me. She took my hand and dragged us after Amanda, stopping to help me when the feeling of inertia became too much and I thought I might be sick. It reminded me so much of when I'd been staying at her house in Japan directly after I'd been released from hospital.

I was dimly aware of the fact I was upset with her for flirting with Macca, but she was just so very _there_ with me. She _was_ finding the whole situation rather entertaining and was filming all of it, but she was still taking care of me. She wouldn't do that if she were truly upset with me, would she? I staggered along the path after her, feeling completely lost. It was so confusing.

We had to cross the river at some point, and Sam tried her best to find somewhere that was shallow enough to walk through. In the end she gave up. "I took swimming classes when I was little," she told me. "I mainly remember how much I loved my swimsuit, but I'm pretty sure they taught us how to save someone who is unconscious, as well."

I glanced up from the dark water at Sam standing knee-deep in it, wearing her bikini top. "Nothing's changed," I told her. "Only now there's no one to tell you to take your swimmers off and put on some real clothes!"

"Oh, I have someone to do that," she said, winking at me. "At least, someone who tells me that when there's a chance anyone _else_ might see me in them…"

I made a face at her, taking an experimental step into the water. I braced myself to lean against the current, but the water was practically still. It wasn't cold the way rivers ordinarily were, either. It was warm; a lovely pleasant temperature that begged to be swum in. God, I might even have actually swum about a bit if Sam hadn't been there. I couldn't trust myself like this.

"Admit it, Lara," Sam said, helping me toward the centre. "You'd totally put me in a burqini if you had the choice."

"Nonsense," I said, deciding that I really should stop trying to pretend my senses were providing me useful information and just trust where Sam was leading me. "I don't mind at all if people see your hair."

She stopped for a moment and turned around, laughing. "Wow, you're tripping out and you can still fire them back," she said. "I'm impressed!" We started moving across the river again. "I should totally make the most of this. I'll probably never get to see you high again, unless some other tribal elder tells you about some sacred weed that's two thousand years old or something."

"In some cultures it's rude to refuse food and drink!" I said. "I wasn't sure if this was one of them!"

"I should send him a thank you card," she said, reaching the other side and helping me up the steep bank so I didn't pitch straight back into it as soon as I stood. "By the way, are you going to strip naked and go on a joy run? Because that's kind of required on your first trip."

"Sorry to disappoint you," I said, shifting my weight from one boot to the other. The squelching of my wet socks inside was a really nice sensation. I did it a few times and then realised Sam was still filming me. I gave her camera a look. "I'm quite happy with the amount of clothes I'm wearing."

"Pity," she said and tapped the camera. "If we need to pixilate anything that's almost guaranteed to double the number of viewers. We could even 'leak' a really blurry version of the unpixilated footage when we need a publicity boost." She winced at my expression. "Okay, yeah, bad idea. I can't even get you in a bikini because of…" she touched her own stomach where my scar was. Her skin was still beautifully smooth, and intricately painted with the chalk paste.

"Seriously, though, Sam," I said as we started walking again. "It wasn't true about me wanting you to cover up. I don't mind at all what you wear. I just mind _why_ you're wearing it."

Sam was scouting the path Amanda had taken up the back of the gorge with the forward light as we approached it. "Why I'm wearing it?" she said, glancing back at me. "Because I'm still young enough to look totally hot?"

I stopped her, pulling her hand so she looked at me. "Sam," I said. "You put on a bikini when it was nearly midnight."

She shrugged, looking a little guarded. "So? I wanted to get painted up."

"By Macca."

She rolled her eyes at me. "By you, actually, but you were God knows where getting high on psychedelic alcohol, so it ended up being him."

That wasn't how the evening had gone at all, at least from my perspective. I hadn't even considered what Sam had thought of me disappearing, though. I probably should have told her, and I felt a little bad about that. It was too late, now.

The path up the gorge was quite steep and I found it harder than usual to hike uphill. I couldn't figure out exactly why that would be. I was quite fit, I shouldn't struggle with the incline. After a few of minutes of feeling lightheaded and dizzy, I stopped and felt my pulse. I couldn't quite find it, though, especially since my hands were shaking.

"Can you…?" I asked her, and placed her fingers where they should have been able to take my pulse.

She pushed around the vicinity for a few moments, and then shook her head. "I can't feel it."

I pushed her fingers harder into my flesh and she paused for a moment, squinting as she felt something. After a moment her eyebrows lowered a little. "That's really fast, Lara," she said, looking concerned. "Maybe we should go back and get you checked out. Maybe it really is poison."

"No," I said, sitting down on the rock beside the narrow path. "Let's just rest a moment and see how I go."

Sam had put her fingers into her own neck. She looked equally concerned. "Mine's quite fast, too. Not as fast as yours."

"I hope you know CPR," I said wryly. I _was_ feeling very lightheaded, but I was fairly certain I'd be alright.

I had just intended to be a little melodramatic for the sake of conversation, but Sam looked alarmed. "At least we'll die together," she said and sat down against me. She took my hand as held it as if she were afraid I would die right at that second. "If something happens to you, that's it for me. All I've got left is a dad who hardly notices I exist and a mum who only calls me when my dad won't give her money."

"…and a great career."

She scoffed. "Don't get me wrong, I love film and media. But it doesn't tuck you in at night, and I'm yet to hear of someone who's lain on their death bed and gone, 'You know, I'm really satisfied with the direction my career took'."

I laughed and accidentally hit my head on the rock face behind me. I couldn't actually feel it connect so much as I _heard_ it through my skull. I felt around with my fingertips for blood just to make sure it wasn't serious. I didn't find any. "Well, it goes both ways," I said. "My parents are dead and so is Roth. I had maybe one or two other close friends, and they're dead, too." I looked up at her. It wasn't the first time I said it, but it seemed a good time to remind her. "You're it for me, Sam."

She just shook her head and tried to feel my pulse again. Her hands were shaking, too.

I didn't want to think about it any further, especially since if we eventually broke up it would have the same effect. There was just too much to lose. I stood, figuring that I would manage the dizziness as best I could as we walked up the gorge.

By the time we made it to the top, I think I was supporting Sam as much as she was supporting me.

"Look!" she said, pointing out toward the gorge.

I did so. The sand bank was still like a bed of polished diamonds and from this angle, the water was a resonant green in the moonlight. Being so far above the river, the twists and turns of it looked like the coils of a huge snake. Once again I was reminded of my dream about the Rainbow Serpent. It wasn't difficult to see why people would see serpentine waterways carving through the landscape and have myths about a snake creating its features. Every myth is based on something, I reminded myself, feeling as if I'd gone some of the way to figuring this one out.

The view was just beautiful, though. I wondered how much more amazing it would look when it was bathed in sunlight. The only thing missing was the haunting didgeridoo Old Johnson had been playing; it was silent now. He must have gone back to the blockade.

"It's like glitter," Sam said wistfully, and I assumed she was talking about the sand. There was something detached about the way she said it which suggested she wasn't thinking clearly. "Did you ever play with glitter? I used to like the ones that were shaped like little stars."

She looked a little out of it, too. "How are you feeling?" I said, ignoring her question about glitter. "Sick?"

She smiled loosely. "Kind of awesome, it's starting to work on me," she said. "How do I look? As bad as you do?"

I raised my eyebrows. "Gee, thanks," I said dryly, and took the camera off her to cast the light over the top of the gorge. There must be an entrance around here somewhere, because Amanda couldn't just have disappeared, could she?

Sam laughed. "I don't mean it like that. You're still totally hot and I'd still hit that even though you're this creepy grey colour and you're staggering all over the place."

"Keep going," I said. "Your foot will be so far down your throat you'll need surgery to remove it." I spotted a crest of rocks and a dark recess in the centre of them. When I shone the forward light into it, the light disappeared. "There, there's the cave."

Sam didn't say anything about the cave. Instead, she leaned forward and passed her hands through the beam of light as though she was expecting it to be solid. "Isn't it amazing how we can do that?" she said. "That we can take this object made of plastic and metal and make light shine out of it?"

I had to laugh hard at that, which made my stomach a little unsettled again. "Oh, Sam," I said, slinging an arm around her. "You are _wasted_."

"So are you," she said, swinging around to face me, her eyes heavy-lidded. I wasn't so much, now, but I didn't correct her. "I kind of want to kiss you on this stuff before it wears off."

"Of course you do," I said, putting a hand on my stomach to remind her. "But, trust me, it's not that safe to. I'm feeling better, but not that much better."

"Yeah, well, I don't do 'safe'," she said, putting her arms around my shoulders. "And neither do you." She pressed her lips against mine.

As I closed my eyes, I became dimly aware of that same feeling I'd had in the hotel room: I was being _watched_. It was an uncomfortable feeling to have when you were kissing someone.

We stopped a moment later because I got a sense that I was falling and when I opened my eyes, I saw the edge of the ground move in a way that suggested I actually _was_. I quickly stuck a leg out and prevented us toppling sideways in a heap. Sam laughed as I wrapped my arms around her to keep her upright.

"Did you feel that?" she asked me, closing her eyes again. "It's like we have a studio audience watching everything we do."

Before we entered the crest in the rocks, I spotted the thin torch in Sam's back pocket and pulled it out. I didn't need a hand free in case I fell anymore.

When we climbed down into the cave, every little sound we made echoed off all the walls. I put my finger to my lips as we entered what I thought was the main area. I was wrong about it, though, because it just lead to a network of further passages.

We started systematically exploring them. To enter some of them, however, we needed to climb and while my dizziness was beginning to subside, Sam's was getting more and more disabling. At one point, she slipped from one of the ledges and grazed all along the delicate skin of her stomach. I rushed up to her to blot the oozing blood with the edge of my t-shirt.

"Oh, God," I whispered, trying to blow away the pebbles as dust from it. "That looks painful."

She smiled lazily down at me. "Luckily, I can't feel it at all," she said. She watched me for a moment and then added, "While you're down there…" She giggled.

I stood up, exhaling at length and shining the torch directly in her face. "You're _fine_."

She didn't stop giggling. "So glad you think so," she whispered, and then posed.

I waited for a few seconds to see if she would compose herself. She just looked at me, mimicked my serious expression, and then completely lost it. I rolled my eyes and pretended I was going to throw her over my shoulder like I had in Sydney. She shrieked and stopped me.

Her shriek echoed off the walls of the cave. I usually found it very entertaining when Sam was stuck in a giggle fit, but we were actually trying to sneak after someone, here. "Shh," I hissed at her, putting my finger to her lips. "You want Amanda to know we're here?"

"Okay, okay," she said, trying to pull herself together. She was still laughing too much to climb, though, so I needed to boost her up everywhere. It was difficult when I still felt as if I was being rocked by the ocean myself.

Eventually we were heading down a passage and I spotted a dim light at the end of it. I switched off my torch and I made a frantic motion for Sam to switch off the forward light.

We felt our way silently toward the end of the tunnel. It was more difficult than I expected, because without the visual cue of which way was up, I kept nearly leaning too far and falling over.

At the end of the passage, I could hear laboured breathing. I edged very carefully against the wall of the cave, peeking around the corner.

I couldn't see Amanda, but I could see what was causing the dull glow: the paintings on the wall of the cave were lit up as if they were phosphorescent. It was just spectacular, and it was more than that: they had the same beautiful twinkling as the sand at the gorge. It was like watching a light show. As I was gazing at one in the shape of a bird, it _moved_.

I was so surprised that I stopped paying close attention to keeping myself upright and slipped against the wall. I fell flat on my stomach in front of a pair of legs in faded jeans. Behind the legs, a huge cavern was bathed in twinkling lights.

" _What_?" Amanda's voice said. I looked back up at her as she shrunk away from me, wrapping her unzipped jumper tightly across her body as if she were hiding something. It made no sense, because I could see the high collar of a polo-neck underneath it. " _Get out!_ " Her voice echoed across the walls.

Behind her, all the paintings were circling the walls of the cavern, moving as if they had lives of their own and sparkling as if they were filled with every star in the sky. I pulled myself to stand, staring at them. My jaw must have been absolutely wide open. This was _incredible_. _These_ were the people watching us. Was 'people' even the right word?

Sam had entered the space behind me, and was frozen in place. "Whoa," was all she could manage. She didn't even try and film them.

"Didn't you hear me?" Amanda shouted, her shock transforming into anger.

Sam just looked at her, and then back at the wall. We were both a little too intoxicated to really be all that affected by her shouting when such an amazing display was happening around us. "Of course we heard you," Sam said neutrally. "You're fucking screaming at us."

That stunned Amanda for a moment, and she just stared at us like she wasn't sure what to do. She looked back nervously at the paintings ambling around the wall, as if she expected that _they_ would do something.

I couldn't help it. "Amanda, this is _amazing_ ," I breathed, slowly walking up to the wall. "What on earth is this? Did you do it?"

"It's years of _my_ hard work and research," she said, still with her arms folder tightly across her middle. "And I'm not sharing it with someone like you."

"And what exactly is Lara like?" Sam said, stirring the pot more than she probably would have if she were sober. "Someone successful, you mean? And famous for their success?"

Amanda's eyes narrowed. As entertaining as it was to watch Sam square off with Amanda, I didn't think insulting her was the way to get her to cooperate. I was right. "No," Amanda said coldly. "A murderer."

I winced; that still hurt. Especially when I thought about people like Larson.

"Yeah, well," Sam said, carefully travelling from the cavern entrance to me with the same grace as a baby taking its first steps. "The feds in Japan cleared her, so you're not talking to one." I took her hand to steady her.

"I'm not talking about Yamatai," Amanda said, her lips pressed sullenly together. She then double-took as she saw Sam in the light. "What the fuck are you wearing?"

"What the fuck are _you_ wearing," Sam shot back, gesturing to Amanda's long sleeves and polo-neck. "Just F.Y.I. it's summer."

Amanda made a frustrated noise as if even talking to us was beneath her. "This is pointless," she mumbled to herself, and then looked back at me. "I'm wasting my breath. You followed me here, now get out. And you'd better not tell anyone or put it in one of your little movies. You don't want to find out what I can do."

Under normal circumstances I probably would have said something pacifying and done as she'd ordered. However, I was still a little out of it and the flurry of light and movement around us was very distracting. I didn't want to leave; I wanted to know so much more about it. I could see the paintings oscillating around me, moving amongst each other like constellations of stars travelling across the sky. I could even feel their eyes on me, ancient and filled with wisdom and eternal patience.

I spotted the bird painting amongst them again. It cocked its head at me and left its slow orbit to fly across the wall, weaving in and out of the other paintings. It was made of the same concentric circles that the sacred design had been in. Was there something sacred about this bird?

It was close enough to touch, so I reached out my hand and—

" _Don't touch it!"_ She yelled, so loudly it actually hurt my ear drums. It had the desired effect, though, because I recoiled from the wall, surprised. "G _et out!"_ she yelled, taking a step toward us with her fists clenched. "Just g _et out!"_ Her palms glowed and the light was seeping out from between her fingers. I was the same phosphorescent glow as the paintings, and I wondered if she were causing the paintings to glow or they were supplying _her_ with the glow. She had said I didn't want to find out what she could do; actually, I really did. I just didn't want her to demonstrate it on me or Sam.

"Come on," I said, taking Sam's hand. "Let's just get out of here."

"Smart choice," Amanda said, and turned her back on us as we left. The glow in her palms faded.

As soon as we'd made it out of the cave, Sam just turned and looked at me. "Please tell me the spirits are telling you to kill her, too." She shivered. "Her and Diane – what a pair of total bitches."

I shook my head and was surprised to find it clear enough that I didn't nearly fall over. "They're not telling me to kill Amanda." I raised my eyebrows as I thought about what we'd just seen. We began to try and navigate the path back down to the river. "I suppose we can always come back later when she's not there. I wonder what on earth I did that caused her to be so very angry at me, though."

Sam shrugged, following me. This time, I was the one leading her by the hand. "Maybe she's just jealous. After all, you're a successful archaeologist who's also this famous actress and she's… a random academic people feel uncomfortable around."

I supposed that was possible. "She _can_ do some sort of magic," I pointed out.

Sam shrugged. "Magic is overrated," she said. "Look what happened to Himiko and Natla."

We climbed down in silence for a few minutes while I thought about that. The descent was much easier than the ascent, and I had been assuming that was thanks to gravity. However, I soon realised the effects of Old Johnson's alcohol had completely worn off and that I wasn't having the same trouble standing upright. Sam also looked to be recovering because she put a hand to her torso and pushed experimentally against the grazed skin there, wincing.

"It's starting to hurt?" I asked, and she nodded.

When we reached the river, I used the water to clean the worst of the dirt out of it. Sam watched me as I cupped water and trickled it down her stomach. "That cave…" she said, letting her sentence trail off.

I looked up at her and she was staring blankly at me. "Yeah," I said, guessing her thoughts. "I don't really know what to make of it, either. It was beautiful, though. I wonder if Amanda was making it glow like that?"

Sam shook her head, indicating she didn't know and then yawned. "You think those spirit-painting-things were what called us?"

"Perhaps," I said, thinking about it as I finished cleaning her graze. That bird darting across the wall and Amanda's reaction to it were stuck at the forefront of my mind. "I wish Amanda wasn't so upset with me, because I'm sure she would know. We should definitely go back there when she's not there and see if the paintings are still doing that."

Sam inspected my work on her stomach. "Maybe I'll wear hiking gear next time," she said.

She showed me the route she'd taken to get to the gorge as she led me back to the blockade. Most of the lights were out inside the tents, but there were still one or two glowing. There was also someone still sitting contemplatively at the fire in the kitchen area. As we got closer to camp, we realised it was Macca.

He was surprised to see us, but he didn't look to be his cheerful self. "Girls," he said, nodding in greeting. He didn't even give Sam a second look.

"Wow, where's the funeral?" Sam asked him and grinned, camera once again poised.

He smiled in appreciation of her attempt to cheer him up, but it was rather empty. "You know those guys who performed for us tonight? They're locals from Fitzroy Crossing," he said and we nodded. "There were cops waiting for them at their houses when they got back. They've all been arrested."

We just stared at him. " _Why_?" Sam said eventually, looking at him over the LCD. "What did they do?"

Macca shrugged. "They're Aboriginal and they were fraternising with us, I guess." He looked glumly back at the fire. "The Kimberley has a rich history of cops arresting Aboriginal people with little to no reason. They can even hold them for twenty-four hours without charging them with anything. I bet they won't hold them a second less." He sighed. "I feel a bit responsible for it, it's because I invited them here. I need to do something about it." He laughed darkly. "Normally I'd be out the front of the cop-shop handcuffing myself in solidary to the front door, but we've got that meeting with the Frost twins tomorrow. I can't miss that, that's the break we've been looking for."

Old Johnson had been so jaded about the mining company, I thought. "They were arrested _because_ of Frost International, weren't they?"

Macca nodded slowly. "I'm sure Frost has something to do with it, yes." He nodded at the camera. "Are you sure you want to be saying that on film? They sue people who even look at them funny."

I laughed humourlessly. "We've filmed more dangerous footage, believe me." Sam and I shared a glance.

Macca noticed it, but didn't say anything. "Anyway, as much as it pains me to say it, there's nothing any of us can do now. Best to sleep on it and try and figure out what we're going to say to the twins tomorrow. G'night," he bid us.

"Good night," I said.

Sam lowered the camera. "Sweet dreams," she told him. I didn't like the tone of it, and it brought back the surge of emotion I'd had before about the way they had been speaking to each other.

Sam noticed it as we were inside the tent and getting ready for bed. "What's going on?" she asked me as she knelt down and rifled through her case looking for her pyjamas.

She was topless and had her back to me. I hadn't washed her back in the river, and all the stripes Macca had painted on her were still in place. To answer her, I just reached out and traced along one of them with my fingertips.

She stopped what she was doing and leant on the edge of the case. When she finally found her pyjama top and pulled it on, I saw there were tears in her eyes. She rubbed them away before they could spill down her cheeks. "You should have done them," she said cryptically, and then crawled into her sleeping bag and turned away from me.

I stared at the back of her head for a few minutes, completely unsure about how to handle it. Why was _she_ crying? I was the one watching the girl I loved mercilessly flirting with someone else. I couldn't figure it out at all, so I got into my own sleeping bag. To make matters worse, my head was beginning to ache.

I could barely make sense of what had happened that evening – any of it – and for a few minutes I bitterly wished that we'd just stayed in the apartment with Bree and Min. This was supposed to be our wonderful holiday, a reward to ourselves for everything we'd been through in the last six months. It would have felt more like one, regardless of what was going on around us, if Sam and I didn't keep upsetting each other.

I wanted to think more about the spectacular paintings and magic we'd just seen, and I wanted to try and think on why Amanda might hate me so much. I even wanted to reflect on what Macca had told me about Old Johnson being arrested and how Frost International seemed to be connected to everything, but I couldn't. I couldn't focus on any of the immediate problems.

All I could think about was how much I wished Sam and I could just be happy.


	14. Chapter 14

Footsteps by our tent at the crack of dawn woke me up.

Fortunately, despite the fact they surprised me, I managed to not cut my way through the canvas tent and hold anyone at knifepoint. Instead, I just lay perfectly still in my sleeping bag, trying to breathe deeply as I waited for them to leave. When they did, I exhaled and switched my phone on briefly to check what time it was. _05:18_. I sighed and turned over again.

After about half six, there were so many people up and about that not being dressed and ready made me nervous. I decided to get up, myself.

Sam was still asleep. Remembering the last conversation we'd had last, I stroked some of the hair from her cheek. She stirred, opening her eyes and looking at me sitting beside her.

We just watched each other for a moment. She put her hand over mine on her cheek. "I love you," she said quietly. It sounded like a question.

"I hope so," I said, thinking of Macca and the stripes on Sam's back.

She frowned at me. "What's that supposed to mean?"

I just shook my head and crawled over to my case, opening it and looking for what I was going to wear. She sat up on her bedroll and wrapped her arms around my middle, pinning mine by my side. "You drive me fucking crazy," she told me. "I didn't cheat on you, if you were wondering."

Actually, I wasn't. Sam did have a history of cheating on her boyfriends, but for some reason I trusted her not to do the same with me. "In the flesh, anyway," I muttered.

"What, I'm not allowed to think about people now?" she asked me, sounding only marginally annoyed. She released me from her hug so she could look at me. "Are you serious? You're a hypocrite." I looked at her. She narrowed her eyes at me. "Come on, like you weren't thinking of going there with Min."

I hadn't been, not really. God, it really hurt having it confirmed that she'd thought about shagging Macca, though. More than I expected it to. I looked away from her and went back to leafing through the t-shirts in my suitcase; I had a couple of nice ones that might be alright to meet Diane and Sean Frost in.

Sam took my face in her hands and forced me to look at her. "Stop it," she said. "You're being all cold and broody again."

"You just basically said you want to shag Macca!"

Sam rolled her eyes dramatically. "Oh, my God, Lara!" she said, flopping back onto her bedroll. "In passing! It's not like I'm waiting for you to leave the tent so I can fantasize about him and masturbate!" She sat up for a second, grabbed me and pulled me on top of her. "Come on, let's do it," she said, obviously joking. "But would you mind using a deeper voice? And maybe putting your hair in dreadlocks?" She kissed my neck, and then rubbed above the crotch of my pyjama pants where she would have found something if I was a guy. She groaned dramatically, pretending she _did_ find something. "Oh, God," she whispered in my ear. "Can I call you 'Macca'? That's okay, right?"

I couldn't help but laugh at her. " _Sam_."

She kissed me properly, dropping the act. "I'm not going to cheat on you. I'm going to get it right this time."

I nodded. "I know, I trust you."

"Really? Because this flipping out kind of says the exact opposite," she said. She had a point. I tried to run over all the times I'd be bothered by the way she'd spoken to Macca to decide if I thought I was overreacting or not. "There!" Sam said, making me look at her again. "Your eyes just go all glassy and you go somewhere else. Stop pushing me away, I'm right here."

"Well, _you_ stop talking to him like that," I told her.

She made a face. "Should I talk to him the way _you_ talk to people?" She delivered as if the obvious answer was 'no'.

I didn't understand. "Yes," I said, instead.

It wasn't the answer she expected. She just stared at me for a moment. "Okay," she said, and kissed me briefly on the lips. "I will." She rolled out from underneath me, going for her own suitcase. "What do you think," she said, holding up a t-shirt. "Should I wear this?"

After we'd washed up and lined up for our toast, we were ready to leave much earlier than Macca had told us to meet him. We decided we'd go down to the area he'd indicated anyway, and he was already waiting there for us. He'd even put on shoes for the occasion, but they were just an old pair of flip-flops. He had company: there was a little girl playing in a patch of orange sand near where he was standing. The little girl had what must have been Macca's water bottle and was very precisely wetting the sand so it stuck together. I recognised the grey singlet she was still wearing.

She looked up as we approached; it was the little girl from the day before. "Hello!" she called to us. "I'm making a house!"

Macca looked up as well, and raised his hand to greet us before crossing it back across his broad chest. "Just the girls I was looking for," he said. "You're very early. I said nine-thirty." He sounded pleased to see us, though.

Sam gave me a hard stare and then said to him. "Just wanted to be polite," she said, giving him a very distant smile. "How are you this morning?" She was being so formal, it was unlike her.

Macca stopped chewing his gum for a moment, and then said. "Good…" He obviously thought she was being odd, too. "Did you sleep well?" He flashed her one of those toothy grins.

She looked directly at me again, and then said to him, "Very well, thank you. Excuse me." She walked over to where Blanket was playing a small distance from Macca. "Wow, that's a cool house!" she said, sounding like herself again. "Where's the bedroom?"

While Blanket and Sam were deep in conversation about the orange sand house, Macca looked from Sam to me. "She's acting weird," he said. "Is something wrong?"

 _Sam_ , I thought. "You don't want to know," I said.

"Oh," he said knowingly, drawing the wrong conclusion. I wasn't particularly bothered if he thought it was that time of the month for her, anyway. Less likelihood he'd try to get into her pants while we were here.

"So what do you think is going to happen today?" I asked. "Do you really think they'll negotiate?"

Macca shrugged. "Honestly? I don't think they'll shut down operations for us. They've been setting the site up for months. If we can get them to agree in writing to stay three k's away from the gorge and Tunnel Creek, that'll be a huge victory. More profits should be given to the local community, and there's also a big question about whether or not they'll pollute the river with run-off. They'll be working quite close to it."

I watched Sam pushing sticks into the ground around the 'house' for trees. Blanket didn't like them and took them out. "You don't put trees so close to a house," she scolded Sam. "What if there's a bushfire?"

Sam glanced up, grinning. I returned her grin and then looked back at Macca. "Do you really think my presence there is likely to make a difference?"

He looked surprised by my question. "Yeah, of course," he said. "I know their PR people would have checked you out. Your Facebook fan page has something insane like eleven million likes. That's a lot of people who you can speak directly to."

I laughed shortly. "I don't actually have anything to do with that page," I told him. "Someone in America made it."

He squinted at me for a moment, and then shook his head as if something I'd said was endearing. "Well, that don't know that," he said. "I think they're going to be very concerned what Lara Croft has to say about Frost International."

When the Frost helicopter arrived, it caused quite a commotion. Macca had arranged for it to land some distance away from the blockade, but it still caused a number of fly-sheets from the camp to rip free of their pegs and blow away. A flurry of people rushed to rescue their tents. Amongst them, I saw blond hair and the porcelain-white face beneath it glaring at me. This morning, at least, I understood why she was angry; if some celebrity had been selected to talk to a company that was mining Yamatai, I'd have been furious. She was the expert on this area just as I was on Yamatai, and she wasn't getting into the helicopter.

"We should bring Amanda," I said as the helicopter touched down on the road near us.

" _What!_ " Sam scoffed as she retrieved her camera from my backpack and filmed the helicopter. "Are you serious? No way!"

I looked back at the other three. Both Sam and Macca were looking at me as if I was slightly mad. "No, really," I said. "She's the one who knows all about the Aboriginal history and culture in the area, and that's what we're trying to protect."

They shared a glance at my expense. Macca gestured to Amanda, looking smug. "Hey, you're welcome to ask her," he said. "Let's see what she says."

I knew what she'd say: not as long as _I_ was going, and I was rather critical to Macca's plan. I felt bad for her, regardless of what she'd said about me.

"I can't believe you want to be nice to her," Sam said to me as we climbed into the helicopter and fiddled with our belts. "I don't care what she knows or what she can do, she's still a total bitch."

Macca climbed in behind us, lifting Blanket up into his arms. I frowned at him. "Wait, you're bringing Blanket?"

Blanket looked indignant. "I want to fly in the helicopter," she told Macca, grabbing ahold of one of his dreads and inspecting a bead knitted into it. "I'm going, too."

Macca looked down at the girl. "Well, what else am I going to do with her? She came with Old Johnson." He placed her on the seat across from us and tried to shorten the belt so it would fit her tiny body. "Jammas is completely hungover, Amanda said no and I don't know anyone else well enough to trust them. I can't just let her run around the camp by herself. "

Sam seemed unconvinced, looking up at him from behind the LCD. "Can't you just call, like, child services or whatever you call it in this country?"

Macca sighed. "Child Protection? They'd only come if I told them I was doing inappropriate things to her," he said. "And even then probably not straight away. I don't want to turn her over to DHS, anyway. Old Johnson will only be locked up for the rest of today." He glanced back at us over his shoulder as he buckled her in. "Besides, and I get that this is kind of underhand, but it gives us a bit more street cred if I take a Bunuba kid in with us. Reminds them of who this land really belongs to."

The pilot ducked his head into the cabin to see if we needed assistance. When it was clear we didn't, he said through the speaker. "I'm closing the doors, hands clear." The doors closed automatically.

The sound of the rotor blades speeding up made Blanket squeal with excitement. She struggled in the belt. "I want to see!" she said, straining toward the window.

"You need to keep the seatbelt on," Macca was saying, "in case the helicopter crashes. If your seatbelt isn't on, you'll bang your head."

Blanket looked back at him. "Is it going to crash?"

"I hope not," Macca said. "But I'm keeping my belt on, just in case. See?" He showed Blanket his belt.

Sam was grinning beside me. "Look, we all have our seatbelts on," she told the girl.

Blanket looked disappointed as she looked across at all of us in our belts. "Okay," she said, and sat still, looking at her legs stretched out in front of her. She was still barefoot, and the soles of her feet were orange from the sand.

As the helicopter lifted off the ground and began to pitch to the left, I had vivid memory of flying the helicopter out of the basecamp near Vilcabamba with semi-conscious Sam in the back. I wouldn't have done that without Larson, I thought, feeling awful about him again. I looked across at Sam, who was very much awake this time. She smiled at me. "Don't take this the wrong way," she said, guessing my thoughts. "But I'm totally relieved that there's a trained pilot flying this one."

"I think my helicopter-flying days are over," I said wryly.

Macca overheard me. "You actually flew that helicopter? I thought you would have had a stunt-actress or something."

Sam grinned at me. "Lara's very method," she told him, panning between us both. "She does all her own action scenes."

Macca looked impressed. "That's hardcore," he said, and then went back to entertaining Blanket.

Sam leaned over to me. "I get that you're not that into him," Sam whispered to me. "But how cute is he with Blanket?" I looked sideways at her, and she rolled her eyes. "Oh, my God, Lara, it's not like I want to breed with him or something… It's just cute."

I was inclined to agree with her. As upset as I was about the whole Sam-Macca drama, watching a muscly, dreadlocked man gently caring for a small child was absolutely gorgeous. It was like watching a patched member of a biker gang cuddle a kitten.

"It's not that I don't like him as a person," I said quietly to her. "He's nice. And yes, it's cute."

Unlike Blanket, I was actually tall enough to see out of the nearby window, so I leant over to it to watching the rolling landscape beneath us. I hadn't known the gorge was so big. I'd walked through it and climbed up it, but I'd thought it was just that one area. The gorge stretched several kilometres along the river. I looked down at all its serpentine curves and bends.

Sam gave the camera to me. "Can you film it?" I nodded and held the lens so it captured the landscape. When I gave it back to her we leant our heads together to watch the footage. "There!" Sam said, pausing the video. She zoomed in and pointed. "That's the entrance," she said, looking pleased with herself.

"You've got better eyes than me," I said, smiling at her. "Wow, that's quite high up. I had no idea."

"You were off your face," Sam said, laughing. "Although I guess by that point I was, as well." She paused, and then said more quietly. "Okay, I've got to say it, what was with you wanting to invite Amanda with us?"

I shrugged. "She has a lot of local knowledge."

Sam raised her eyebrows at me. "Yeah, but she threatened you, yelled at you and called you a murderer."

Only the murderer part had bothered me, and only because it was true. "Wait a second," I said, thinking about that. "She said that it wasn't in reference to Yamatai, the murderer comment. You didn't put any footage of me killing anyone in the movie."

Sam inclined her head from side to side. "Yeah, but I guess if you believed it was a true account of events it's kind of clear that you killed Larson, and people probably think you killed Pierre, too, even though we said it was the centaurs." She paused. "Also there was that news report about a crazed gunman at the hotel in Greece. I guess if you connect the dots…"

I leant back in my seat, thinking about it. "Professor Chamberlain doesn't even think the movie is real," I said. "But I suppose it's possible Amanda investigated parts of it herself. Based on the footage it would have been possible to find St. Francis' Folly, at least. Maybe also Atlantis, or whatever rubble is left of it, if you were looking hard enough and had the right equipment." I thought on that. "Or the right power."

Sam looked at me. "Do you really think she would have, though? She seems pretty into this Australian stuff."

I shook my head, I didn't know.

Sam thought for a moment and then grinned. "It's also possible she's a vegetarian and is _horrified_ that you killed animals and ate them, or that you'd eat a hamburger in front of her. You _murderer_."

The helicopter ride was really short. Macca hadn't been kidding when he said the mine site was really close to the gorge; I could actually see the gorge from where we touched down. All his concerns about the area seemed spot on.

Beside the helipad there was an airstrip, and as the helicopter powered down, a light plane landed beside us and a good twenty men got out of it.

Macca was looking with concern at them, but didn't say anything as he carried Blanket out of the plane. "Where are we?" Blanket asked him.

"You remember how I told you about the bad people who locked up your grandpa and want to take all the diamonds away without paying for them?" Macca asked her, and she nodded. "This is where they live. But we have to be nice to them, okay?"

"Okay," Blanket said, and then put her arms around his neck and wouldn't let him put her down.

Standing beside the helipad just inside the reception centre were two suited figures, both wearing high-visibility vests over their work-wear. Even from this distance I could tell they were Diane and Sean Frost. I braced for the visions of slitting her throat or bludgeoning her, but they were conspicuously absent. That was a surprise. I frowned.

She walked toward us when the rotor blades were completely still, extending her hand to me to shake. I did so hesitantly.

"Lara Croft," she said smoothly. "What a pleasure it is to have you and your young director here. I am so embarrassed that I didn't recognise you at the airport." She shook Sam's hand as well, and then ushered us toward Sean and the reception centre. "You'll have to forgive me. I don't get much time to watch movies." She laughed pleasantly.

I looked across at Macca who hadn't been given any sort of welcome at all. _He_ was staring at the back of her head like he wanted to put something through it. When Diane glanced back at me, I realised I hadn't replied. "Thank you for inviting us," I said.

"This is my brother Sean," she said, and we all shook his hand. Unlike Diane, Sean did actually greet Macca, and he stepped around Macca's back to greet Blanket who was hugged around his shoulders. She hid her face from him, though.

Sean chuckled. "Children," he said to us. "Is she your first? I have three, myself. My oldest is about her age."

Macca looked a little confused; Blanket could not have been more obviously not Macca's child. He opted to avoid the question. "Are they here with you?"

Sean shook his head. "No, my wife doesn't like the heat," he said. "They're all in a nice air-conditioned house near our head office in Sydney."

Diane gestured for us to follow her. "We usually have a lovely young man who does our tours for us, but it's he's FIFO and it's his week off."

We all followed her. Sam had hidden her camera as per Macca's request, but she narrowed her eyes at me, looking pointedly at my backpack where it was and then asked Diane. I knew what she was thinking. "You do _tours_ here?"

Diane looked surprised. "Of course, all of our major shareholders and every new set of employees. We're very proud of our operations. We have state of the art technology and it's our pleasure to demystify mining to whoever's interested," she said, and stopped outside a hallway. "We thought we'd show you the whole site before we sit down to talk," she said. "So at least you have some idea where we're coming from on this. I think you'll find that once you learn just how careful we are about the environment, your conscience will be put at ease." She smiled at us.

I could see the veins on Macca's temples pulsing. After Diane's back was turned, he muttered, "You blow fucking holes in the earth, woman."

Sam reached into my backpack. "Uh, this is a bit of a long shot," she said to Diane. "But is it okay if I film?"

Diane and Sean shared a glance, and then Diane smiled. "Of course you can," she said. "But unfortunately you'll find me rather boring – I'm not a winged demon." She laughed; apparently she'd taken the time to watch _Tomb Raider_ last night. "Go ahead, we've nothing to hide here."

Sam looked about as uneasy as I felt. Of course, Diane's purpose for seeing us _was_ to make sure we didn't speak badly about her to the media, so obviously she wanted to make a good impression. However, for some reason it made me really nervous that she was letting Sam film. I hoped it was just because she was buttering us up.

Out the back of the reception centre was something that looked like a large golf buggy. Sean got in the drivers' seat, and Diane invited us to get in the back of it with her and sat across from us. As Sean drove us out into the yard, there were a lot of men already hanging around.

Diane saw me looking at them. "We're waiting to get the machinery in so we can start operations," she said. "Unfortunately there have been some logistical difficulties as the road is blocked." She glanced at Macca, who was staring back at her. She was unfazed by his cold expression. "As soon as that problem is sorted out, we'll get to work," she said.

"Hey, boss!" someone called out from the yard. She waved politely at him, and then he spotted us beside her. "Tomb Raider!" he called out, then to Sam he yelled, "Ni Hao," and he and his friends laughed.

Sam glared over the LCD at them, looking disgusted. "You've got to be kidding me," she said to us.

"They're just trying to be friendly," Diane said. "Sorry if they sound a bit uncouth. I like to give employment opportunities to people who are often left out, here. Unfortunately it means their workplace professionalism needs further training." She gestured at the yard, anyway. "This is where they all tend to congregate between shifts," she said. "It's the only area on the site they're allowed to smoke." She pointed over at some buildings on the other side. "That's the kitchen and the dining hall, and behind them are all the living quarters. During peak production, just over five hundred workers will be housed on site. We're actually building a recreation centre on the side of the hill, there." We all looked, and there were a couple of crane necks extending above the dining hall. They didn't look like they were in operation. "There will be a gym, a small movie theatre and some basic shops. We offer our workers the option of 'Fly-In, Fly-Out' or 'FIFO', which is where they live elsewhere and we fly them in and out after periods of work. However, the benefit of hiring the sort of staff we do means that many of them are happy to live on site for the length of their contracts."

She was speaking so casually about the men Sam and I had spied on at the pub in Broome, I actually had to actively remind myself what type of men they were. She was making sense, though. Perhaps there wasn't any sinister reason why Frost International hired ex-cons; it was purely a business decision that was paying off for them. I still felt uneasy, though.

While we were driving out of the yard, Sam leant over to me and whispered. "You have got the best deadpan ever," she said. I frowned at her. "You don't look like you want to kill her at all."

"I don't," I whispered back. "It's gone."

She raised her eyebrows at me. "Maybe something happened at the cave?"

I shrugged. We'd reached what I thought was another building, but as Sean pulled the buggy up near the structure, I saw vehicle tracks leading down into it at an incline. It was an enormous hole in the ground. Sean hopped out of the driver's seat, jogging over to the wall and turning the switch there. A series of fluorescent lights flickered and switched on in series down the hole, leading in a straight line deep into the ground.

"This is our Exploratory Decline," Diane explained. "Every diamond mine constructs one of these to study the rock that will be mined and to conduct economic feasibility studies. It's nearly three kilometres long and leads more than three hundred metres underground. We were actually very lucky," she said. "The volcanic bowl that we're mining has three pipes in it – this mine should be operational for a good twelve years. Do you know much about diamond mining?"

Sam and I shook our heads.

Sean switched off the light and hopped back in the buggy as Diane explained, "I'll spare you all the boring details and stick to the basics. There are two sorts of rock diamond is found in, kimberlite and lamproite. 'Kimberlite' is actually named after the Earl of Kimberley, the founder of this beautiful region we're in." She spoke smoothly as if she'd been through these details many times before. "However, 'the Kimberley' is a bit of a misnomer as the mineral pipes in this area actually lamproite. But, I suppose 'The Lamproey' doesn't have the same ring to it, does it?"

We drove further into the site. Diane explained more about operations as we drove, but not very much of it interested me. She was an entertaining speaker, but I didn't really care for mining. I _was_ interested, though, in three more large entrance holes we passed. They had metal tracks laid into them, and there were big vacant areas around the holes that had been cleared and flattened. I asked about them.

"These are where the ore from our underground operations will be transferred onto trucks and taken to our processing facility on the other side of the site. Trams transport the ore nearly four kilometres underground," she said. "And," she leaned closer to us as if she were about to divulge juicy details, "We're using cutting-edge technology in our underground operations. Block-mining is by nature very dangerous, it's essentially exploding chunks of rock down from overhanging pipes. However, we're using remote control technology to allow men above ground to control vehicles underground. Even our tow trucks for breakdowns are remote-controlled."

Sam leaned over to me. "Alex would have _wet_ himself if he saw this," she said. I smiled faintly – she was right.

Diane overheard her. "Alex is a friend of yours?"

"Was," Sam corrected her. "But he was killed on Yamatai."

Her eyes glazed a little. "My condolences," she said. "That must have been quite an ordeal."

I felt very uncomfortable discussing it with her, actually. She noticed, and moved the topic right along. "Anyway, we're unable to get the vehicles on site at the moment," she said. "Due to the logistical issues we mentioned earlier."

We reached the far end of the site. In the distance there was a ridge on the horizon. "That's Tunnel Creek," she said, and then turned around and pointed at the gorge on the other side. "And Windjana Gorge, there. As you can see, we're not encroaching on either of the historical locations. Our operations go downward into the ground, not across it. Both sites are safe, and we have full permissions from the Title Holders of the land here, the Bunuba people. We even have it in writing."

Blanket looked up at the mention of 'Bunuba'. Diane smiled at her, but it was clear she felt uncomfortable around children. "Well, hello," she said to the little girl.

Blanket didn't look fooled by her. "I want my grandpa back."

My breath caught in my throat.

Macca looked completely panicked, but he was unsure what to do. "Shh," he told her. "Don't talk about that now."

Diane's eyebrows went up for a moment and then lowered over her eyes. She and Sean shared a troubled glance. It was actually Sean who spoke. "What do you mean?" he asked Blanket in a very child-friendly voice, ignoring Macca's attempts to quiet her.

"You took him," Blanket said. "I want him back."

Sean was about to say something to Blanket, but Diane interrupted him. "I think the best thing to do would be to get straight down to business," she suggested, and perhaps I heard some smugness in her voice. She certainly sounded markedly less pleasant than she had just a moment ago, but no less professional. Sam took my hand and squeezed it. Diane looked over at Sean, "Just take us back to the reception centre." The way she spoke to him was very detached, as if he were just another staff member and not her brother.

For the whole trip back to the centre, Diane was staring directly at Sam and I so we couldn't speak to each other. Sam was fidgeting uncomfortably, though, trying to pretend she was engrossed in filming the site. She had my hand in a vice-grip.

My heart was pounding. Something was wrong, but I didn't know what. Surely even the mere suggestions Frost International had been involved in arresting the performers wasn't enough to get them offside, was it?

As we drove through the location, I kept seeing things in the yard I could hide in, things I could climb onto or around or under. The buggy was driving at quite a speed. So, while it might have been possible for Sam, Macca or myself to manage a jump out of it, we had Blanket to worry about. God, I thought as I looked at the tiny girl, it was a mistake to bring you here.

At the reception centre, though, making a run for it still didn't seem like the right thing to do. I couldn't just take off by myself, I'd need to warn both Macca and Sam. And while I had a very bad feeling about where these discussions were headed, I didn't know for sure if I was right. I'd pulled a knife on some poor man who had only been congratulating me, for chrissake. Maybe I was just overreacting to an uncomfortable situation.

There were people everywhere around us downstairs, probably because of the air-conditioning. Many of them were the men from the pub, but there were also a few young reception employees who were dressed in suits. I didn't know if any of them would stop me if I ran, but it didn't seem like the right thing to do. It just looked like an ordinary workplace. I'd look absolutely mad if I just suddenly dashed through them.

"This way," Diane said, ushering us up a flight of stairs. "The board room is just at the far end of the corridor."

As we walked along the corridor, one of the reception staff stopped us before we went through the double-doors of the board room. It was a young woman and she looked really apologetic. "I'm sorry to interrupt you," she said to Diane, her eyes travelling uncomfortably between Diane and us, "but Linfox wants to know whether or not you want to go ahead as planned."

"Let them know we'll proceed straight away," she said, looking over her shoulder at us briefly. "I want it all finished and the paperwork all completed today." She dismissed the girl, and then turned to us. "Sorry about that," she said, opening the doors. "Come in."

I watched the girl walk back down the corridor. She glanced back at us before she went down the stairs. There was _pity_ on her face. If my heart hadn't been pounding before, it was pounding now.

It was Sam's gasp than made me look back towards the rest of them; and I saw immediately why. There were two men in security uniforms with the Frost logo on them standing just inside the door, and behind them a figure was seated on the side of the board table.

It was Old Johnson, and he was wearing a suit.

"This is one of the Bunuba Elders, Dean Johnson," Diane said, introducing him. "I think you may have met. It's our pleasure to be in consultation with him in this process."

For a moment, the only thing I was aware of was the sound of my pulse in my ears and the fact there was a window beside me. It was single-glazed, I could kick through it. "Lara…" Sam whispered to me. I didn't let go of her hand.

"Grandpa!" Blanket shrieked, and clambered down off Macca to rush over to him, neatly avoiding the security guards who tried to stop her. However, as she approached him, he had almost no reaction to her.

She stopped in her tracks before she got to him, staring. Then, she ran back to Macca, looking very distressed. He picked her up automatically. "What's wrong?" he asked her. "Don't you want to go talk to your Grandpa?"

"That's not my Grandpa!" she said, and started to cry. "I want to go home!"

Sean forced a laugh as if someone Blanket had said was silly. "Ah, children!" he said, and then spoke to her. "I bet your grandpa looks very different in these clothes, doesn't he?" He looked at us. "She's probably never seen him in a suit before."

That wasn't it, I was sure of it. Old Johnson wasn't making eye-contact with any of us. Something was wrong, something _had_ to be wrong. He had behaved so differently last night, and he'd been no fan of the mining company. Yet, here he was.

I looked at Diane. "What have you done to him?" I said bluntly.

Diane feigned surprised. "I don't know what you're talking about," she said. "Why don't you ask him yourself why he's here?"

"Sit down, let's talk," Old Johnson said, still not looking at us. "I'm here to talk."

Sam and Macca and I all looked at each other. I didn't like the idea of being enclosed in the board room with the twins and their two security guards, but again it didn't look like I had much of a choice. Not if I didn't want to leave Macca and Blanket here, anyway. I couldn't do that.

We all sat down at the board table. There was a box in the centre of it, near where Diane and Sean seated themselves.

Macca tried to sit next to Old Johnson but Blanket wouldn't have any of it. She shrieked when Macca got too close to him, and eventually he had to sit on the other side of the table. Macca was watching the old man, looking deeply concerned. "OJ," he said, "Are you okay?" He glanced at Diane and Sean, and then at the security guards. "I hope they didn't mistreat you in jail."

Old Johnson didn't look up from the spot he'd been staring at on the table. "I didn't go to jail," he said. "I slept here last night, them miners gave me a real comfy bed and some good food."

"It sounds like he was more comfortable with us than he would be at your little protest camp," Diane commented. "It was a great honour to show a Bunuba elder around the mine and accommodate him afterwards. We've had lots of opportunity to talk about the project, and now that he understands his sacred spaces are protected, he's glad he made the right decision to partner with us."

"It's good for the economy here," Old Johnson said. I just stared at him. I couldn't connect the Old Johnson I'd seen recounting the Dreamtime stories and playing didgeridoo with this one in front of us.

"What have they done to you?" Macca asked, and then turned his whole body with Blanket draped over his shoulder toward Diane. "You _blackmailed_ him somehow."

Diane was smiling politely at us and then looked back at Old Johnson. Old Johnson made a gruff noise. "Nobody's blackmailing me," he said, sounding a little angry. "Now I understand this here mine, I changed my mind."

Diane sat back in her leather swivel chair and crossed her legs. "Perhaps you three will do the same," she said, a lazy half-smile creeping onto her lips. God, she reminded me of Natla at that moment. "Shall I show you some of the samples of the beautiful diamonds that will be produced here? We've found blue and pink diamonds in these pipes. One carat of pink diamond sells for well over a million dollars; they're the most beautiful diamonds in the world. Just imagine all that money being injected into the sluggish local economy. It would benefit everyone."

Macca looked disgusted, finally recovering from his shock. "But it's not going into the local economy, is it? It's going straight from the sacred ground of the Bunuba people right into your pockets without passing 'go'." He looked at Sean, who'd been mostly silent through the whole discussion but at Diane's bidding had stood up and retrieved the box from the centre of the table. "Come on, Mate. Man to man. It's not right to fuck over the local communities just because you want to make a buck."

Sean didn't make eye-contact with him, but he didn't look remorseful, either.

Diane spoke for him. "Our agreement will see fifteen per cent of all profits donated to the local community for facilities and programs to help the locals," she said.

Old Johnson echoed, "Local communities don't have much money. This will give us what we need to get truancy under control so my little granddaughter can get the education she deserves." It sounded like something he'd memorised out of an advertising brochure.

Blanket, not at all excited by what Old Johnson was saying, was still crying quietly into Macca's shoulder.

Macca scoffed, ignoring what Old Johnson had parroted. "That's not a fucking initiative," he told Diane. "Fifteen per cent is the fucking law. Don't act like you're so generous just for just obeying it."

Sean had walked around to us, and as he passed behind me, my nerves sang. He was lucky he didn't touch me as he placed several items on the table in front of Sam and I: an _enormous_ chunk of crystalline diamond ore _,_ and several small plastic bags filled with different coloured of cut diamonds.

Under ordinary circumstances, Sam would have been right into those bags. Now, though, we both just stared at them, holding hands under the table.

"So," Diane said. "We're in partnership with the Bunuba community, the sacred sites are protected, even the local title-holders of this land are working with us." She smiled warmly at Old Johnson, who was still staring at the table. "We're compliant with all the applicable environmental laws and you're about to see the beautiful diamonds we'll be creating." She nodded at the diamonds on the table in front of us. "We don't ordinarily allow this, but perhaps you'd like to touch them?"

I didn't want to touch them, not at all. I wanted to jump out the window and run off into the distance.

"Go on," Diane urged us. "I think you'll fully appreciate this mine if you're able to sample its produce."

Sam and I looked at each other. I then looked across at Macca. He was breathing quickly, and I could see him sizing up the security guards by the door as he looked around the room. I wondered if he could fight.

There didn't seem to be any sense in saying no to Diane; I thought maybe if I did what they wanted they would let us leave sooner. As I reached out across the table towards the diamonds, both Diane and Sean were completely focused on my hand. I picked up the chunk of uncut crystalline ore, and held it closer to examine it. It was heavy and cool and about the size of my fist. It hadn't been cut, but it was cleaned, so I could see my palm distorted through it. It was pretty, I supposed, but there wasn't anything mind-blowing about it.

I looked up at them, confused.

Diane smiled triumphantly at me. "Now that you've seen our beautiful diamonds, perhaps you'll change how you feel about our mines and become a spokesperson for Frost International."

I gave the stone to Sam to look at. "I haven't changed my mind," I said. "I'm not sure why you think showing me loads of diamonds changes the fact you're mining too close to sacred locations," I said, and then thought for a moment before adding, "Or the fact you've obviously done something horrible to this poor man here." I nodded at Old Johnson.

Diane and Sean just stared at me. Then, they glanced at each other, looking confused. Seeing them look so flustered made me feel more sure of myself. Something had gone wrong with whatever their plan was, and that gave me confidence.

"I know you invited me here to try and convince me that I shouldn't speak up against your company, but frankly, all you've done is given me even more reason to do so." I said. "So tell Old Johnson you're not going to do whatever you've threatened him with, and let him go. Then we can talk about all the concessions you can make to the local community to compensate them for losing a priceless natural resource."

Macca had been gaping at me, but when he closed his jaw, he gave me a small thumbs-up with the hand he was holding Blanket with. "Yeah," he said, supporting me.

When I looked at Sam… God, her expression. She was practically starry-eyed. She squeezed my hand, and I noticed that although she was trying very hard not to draw attention to her camera, it was lying flat on the table. The LED was flashing.

I smiled to myself, too. It felt good to speak like that and stand up for people. I looked over at Old Johnson. What had they done to him? He didn't look slumped and I couldn't see any bruises on him. He must not have been beaten, then. It must be blackmail, that's the only thing I could think of. What was coming out of his mouth and everything else about him just didn't marry up. Well, I wouldn't let them do anything else to him.

"I'm listening to whatever you plan to offer them," I said pointedly, and then turned to Old Johnson. "Come on, you can go." He didn't move.

Sean leaned over to Diane to speak privately to her. They conferred for a few seconds, and then Diane looked back at us. She still seemed a little rattled, but when she spoke she didn't sound it. "I think there's been some misunderstanding about why you were invited here," she said. "We were hoping once you understood that there's no threat to the archaeologically significant spaces or the community that you would see we're not the big bad company your friend here has probably portrayed us as." She looked at Macca, and then back to me. "I can see we're not going to see eye to eye on this one," she said, standing. It seemed the meeting was over.

We all stood, too. Only Old Johnson remained seated. Macca had been facing out of the large windows, and he froze as he looked out them. Both Sam and I looked where he was. Out the window, there was a procession of oversized trucks towing the most colossal equipment I had ever seen. The wheels on some of the trucks were bigger than a whole standard car, and there were dozens of them in an ant-trail up the road.

"How did you….?" Macca began, his eyes following the vehicles along the road into the distance. I remembered Macca saying there was only one road into the mine, and that the blockade had been camped across it.

Oh, my God. The Blockade.

"What have you done?" Macca said, his jaw open as he stared at them. "We had permits, Frost. It was a _legal, registered protest_. You fucking cowards."

Diane ignored him, speaking to Sam and I. "There's an operation in place further up the road," she said calmly. "So naturally I can't let you leave and return there, it's not safe. However, we've prepared some very comfortable quarters on site for you to stay in. They're nice, aren't they, Mr. Johnson?"

"Very nice," he said, his voice devoid of expression.

"I recommend you don't leave them," she said, a dark smile growing on her lips. "I hear the men here aren't that accommodating toward you, and we can't be watching you all the time."

Sam had wrapped her hand around my arm. "We're not going to stay here," she said. "You can't force us to."

Diane shrugged. "I'm afraid Australian OH&S laws require me to exercise a duty of care over guests on the mine site," she said. "If I have to detain you for your safety, then I intend to."

"It's not for our safety," I said viciously, "you just don't want us to talk to the media or get in the way of whatever you're doing to the people at the blockade!"

Diane nodded at the security guards behind us, who stepped forward. One of them took the stone away from Sam and handed it back to Sean. He then came back over to us. "Let's go," he said. "Keep it nice and simple, no trouble."

He put hand on Sam's shoulder and was reaching for her camera, too. I roughly pushed him away from us. "Don't you touch her!"

Diane exhaled at length, walking over to an internal phone on the wall. She lifted the handset and pressed zero. "Security," she said. "We'll need some assistance in the board room."


	15. Chapter 15

Unfortunately, the guards weren't stupid enough to both go for me. Instead, they descended on Macca and Blanket. Blanket _shrieked_ ; a loud, piercing sound that strained my eardrums.

Old Johnson just sat there as if he was hypnotised, despite the fact his granddaughter was screaming. That more than anything else was the final detail that made me realise there was something wrong about him. This wasn't blackmail. I couldn't think about that now, though, I had to help Macca and Blanket. I rushed around the table.

"You fucking cowards!" Macca shouted, struggling with them. They were trained, and even when I kicked one of them in the back of the knee he barely staggered. Blanket was still screaming as Macca yelled to Diane and Sean, "Arresting and blackmailing old men, hurting _children_ , why don't we just find some blind guy you can beat up to complete the trifecta?"

"This is a publically listed enterprise," Diane said evenly. "I have shareholders to worry about, no one's going to get hurt, especially not children. You might hurt yourself if you don't cooperate, though." The fact the guards were trying to pry Blanket from Macca rather contradicted what she'd said, though.

Sam was a short distance behind me. "Do you seriously expect us to believe anything that comes out of your mouth after whatever you did to him?" she asked Diane, gesturing at Old Johnson.

One of the security guards elbowed me sharply in the jaw as I tried to pull him free of Macca and it knocked me down. I lay there for a second as my vision swam and my heart pounded in my ears. Sam bent down to check I was alright, and in the meantime the guards managed to wrestle Blanket out of Macca's arms even as he punched one of them squarely in the face. He stepped away, shaking his fist out and looking furious.

Sam helped me up.

Once the guards had Blanket, there wasn't much we could do to them because none of us wanted to hurt her. Blanket pushed away from the guard weakly, reaching tragically towards Macca with tears pouring down her cheeks.

Macca was so angry he was shaking. "You make me sick," he spat at Diane. "I hope you lose everything for what you've done and end up in the gutter."

Diane didn't look fazed. "Take the camera, as well," she told the guard, very pointedly ignoring Macca. "And make sure you properly dispose of it."

The guard held his hand out to Sam. She waivered for a moment and then grudgingly gave it to him. The look of disappointment on her face was enough for me to nearly deck the guy just for good measure, and I would have. That is, if it wasn't for Blanket.

At that moment, the double-doors burst open and two extra guards entered. They looked puffed; they'd been running.

Diane nodded at us. "Take them to confinement," she said. "Put them in separate rooms."

One of them grabbed my wrist and I wrenched it free. "I'm coming, alright?" I said, shrugging him off and letting him usher me.

"That's better," Diane said, seating herself at the table again now it was clear we weren't going to attack her. "You'll thank me later, believe me." Sean just stood in the background, silent and with that same neutral expression he'd been wearing the whole time. I wondered what part _he_ was playing in all this. Whatever it was, it was infuriating watching how calm they both were.

So infuriating, in fact, that Macca looked as if he was about one second away from climbing the clocktower with a rifle, and Diane was clearly going to be his first target. Sam put a hand on his arm. "It's not worth it," she said, looking between him and Diane.

Macca took a few deep breathes, glaring back at Diane as he let himself be herded out of the board room with me.

There was a back exit to the reception centre, and that's where the four guards took us. To the side of it was a rubbish compactor, and the guard tossed Sam's camera in there and then activated the compressor. Sam watched it over her shoulder, looking forlorn.

"Later," I murmured to her.

The guard holding Blanket was walking in front of me as we entered the yard. She stared over his shoulder at me, her cheeks wet. "I want to go home," she told me.

"Me, too," I said to her. Sam took my hand.

The guards looked at each other and then back at us. Again, I saw the same pity that I'd seen on the face of the reception staff member. I couldn't leave it be. "What are you going to do to us?"

The guard shrugged. "You heard what she said same as we did."

"That's not what I meant. Why are you looking at us like we're about to be marched in front of a firing squad?"

The other guard elbowed his colleague and the look he directed him warned him to keep his mouth shut. They both looked forward again and no one answered my question. It must be bad, I thought. I looked sideways at Sam and imagined her devoid of all emotion and hypnotised the way Old Johnson had been. God, I couldn't stand it if that happened to her. It would be _me_ firing shots from the clocktower.

We were on the opposite side of the dining hall to the main yard where all the men were, but I could see some of them through the large windows. They were pointing and watching us like we were fish in an aquarium. I felt uneasy about that, I didn't want them to know where we were going or that we were detained. I was certain a large number of the men would have 'break and enter' on their conviction list.

When we reached the confinement area, it wasn't at all like I expected. I had imagined solitary jail cells with padded walls, but these simply appeared to be portable buildings just like the other living quarters with locks on the _outside_ of the doors. We had to go up a small flight of metal stairs to get to the walkway that led to each of them, as they'd been built on an incline.

When the guards unlocked the first room and made to put Blanket in there, she began with, "No, I don't want to go in there, I want to go home!" and struggled.

The guard holding her was trying to restrain her without hurting her. That was heartening, at least. Not everyone on this site was a sociopath. "Come on, be a good girl," he said with an American accent. "Grandpa would want you to be a good girl."

Blanket continued to struggle and one of the other guards tried to help the first. With the two of them trying to hold her, her struggles became even more violent and her pleading turned into screaming and shrieking.

I looked across at Sam. She took a deep breath and surreptitiously glanced over the edge of the railing to see how far down it was to the ground. Far enough for a hard fall, I thought.

A guard was between Macca and I. When Macca looked at me, the guard pointed at him and said in an Australian accent, "Don't you try anything."

Sam smirked at me, and I understood. It wasn't Macca this guard needed to worry about.

When they walked Blanket towards the open door, she stopped screaming and when the _guard_ yelled I realised she'd bitten the guard's arm. Her own arms and legs were flailing everywhere and he would have been getting pummelled in the stomach by her heels. The other guard stood back a little to avoid getting kicked in the stomach and got kicked in the face, instead. He put a hand to his eye and swore at her. "You fucking _brat_!" he yelled.

Macca and I made eye contact again. I nodded.

Bracing myself against the railing, I put a boot in the Australian security guard's torso and kicked him down the stairs behind us. Before the other guard beside us could react, I threw him over the railing. He grabbed ahold of my backpack, though, and nearly pulled me over with him. I hammered at his hand with my fist, trying to get him to let go. Eventually he did, and I heard him groan as he hit the ground some distance below us. He wouldn't be getting up from that fall very quickly.

Macca had gone to pull Blanket from the guard holding her, but Blanket beat us both to it by biting the guard's face so hard he released her. She took off at full speed along the walkway, shrieking, with the other guard hot on her heels. I only needed to take a few steps to get a handful of the guard's shirt. I used his momentum to swing him around into the door he'd opened for Blanket.

He'd hooked one of his feet around mine and taken my ponytail, though. He wasn't going to be locked up without a fight. I gasped as he jerked my hair, kicking at his leg to get it inside the room. He was trying to jam his thumbs into my eyes, and because of the hold he had on my ponytail I was having trouble stopping him. Sam came to my rescue, slamming the door shut on his on his wrist with such force he let go. I bolted it closed before he could get up.

"Thanks," I said to her. She pretended to dust her shoulders. Macca paused to make sure I was okay, and then ran off in the direction Blanket had gone.

The last guard was still bent double, holding his bleeding face. Sam ducked around him and took his radio from his belt. "Thank you!" she said with false cheer, and ran after Macca and Blanket.

I looked down at him. He looked back at me, wiping the blood from his eye and standing up to bar my passage. When I made an attempt to pass him, he knocked my feet out from underneath me. Before I managed to get up, he'd kneeled on my back just under my daypack and pinned my arms. His mistake was being too worried about the fact my heels were kicking at him to notice how close his head was to mine. I drove the back of my head into his jaw twice, until he was distracted enough for me to push him off.

Just to be safe, I kicked his head to knock him out before I sprinted after the others.

Blanket had run along the walkway until it ended at some sort of kitchen. When I got there, both Sam and Macca were trying to open the far window to go through it. Macca already had Blanket on a hip and her arms were tightly around his neck. I could only see her eyes looking at me over his shoulders. "Are you alright?" I asked her. "Did they hurt you?"

She shook her head. "I bit him," she said. "He tasted yuck. I want to go home."

Macca patted her back. "I can't believe they're actually doing this," Macca said, going back to attempting to force the window. "I mean, I should believe it, shouldn't I? People who are happy to ruin the planet and destroy thousands of years of culture probably don't care about human rights, either."

While he was talking, I dragged the lunch table against the door we'd entered through to jam it shut. I then went over to the kitchen to see what makeshift weapons I could find.

Sam was helping Macca with the window. "Hold this," she said, making him hold the frame at an angle while she tried to loosen the hinges. "I watched this documentary about how most CEOs are actually workplace psychopaths. It was really interesting. Kind of disturbing, though." She gave up on the hinges and stood back looking over at me near the sink. "Especially since my Dad is a CEO. Maybe we could unscrew the hinges with a knife?"

I opened the drawer; there was nothing but little airline-style packages. I showed them to Sam. "Plastic cutlery," I said. "And my pocket knife doesn't work as a screwdriver, it's too pointy."

Macca was looking up at Sam. "You're pretty calm for being trapped on a mine site with psychopaths who want to lock us up and probably brainwash us."

Sam shrugged. "They're not zombie centaurs," she said cryptically. "They're just people. They don't even have guns."

I chuckled. Macca just thought she was joking. "Still got your sense of humour, too," he said, as they went back to trying to work the latch.

They were taking ages with the bloody window, it was stressful. I paced behind them, arms folded over my chest as I went over what had happened.

That chunk of diamond ore, I thought. Whatever they'd done to Old Johnson, I knew it must have something to do with it. The Frosts had expected something would happen to me when I touched the stone… something about becoming a spokesperson for Frost International. They would have known there was no way on earth I would do that, but yet they expected I would change my mind when I touched it. That was it, I thought. They've used some sort of magic from that stone on him. "The big diamond," I said aloud. "The Frosts used it to hypnotise Old Johnson somehow."

Macca glanced over his shoulder at me as if I was crazy. "They probably just beat the living crap out of him in jail and blackmailed him," he said as Sam and he tried to force the latch. "It's generational, I've seen the cops do it before."

Sam and I shared a glance. I had forgotten Macca was new to this.

There were footsteps on the walkway and the handle on the door turned. The door opened an inch and then slammed in the table I'd pushed there. Blanket started whimpering again.

I turned back to Sam and Macca, my heart pounding. "Are you nearly done?"

"Almost," Sam said, trying very gingerly break the latch.

I looked over their shoulder. This wasn't brain surgery for crying out loud, the window had no bars on it. "Out of the way," I told them, and as soon as they moved I picked up a kitchen chair and threw it through the window. It was safety glass, and it all just exploded into fine pebbles on impact. "Watch you don't cut yourselves," I told them, accepting Blanket momentarily off Macca so he could get through the window.

"Why are they chasing us?" Blanket asked me, looking up at me with big owl eyes.

"Because they're very bad people," I told her, passing her through to Macca. She weighed practically nothing; she was so tiny and skinny. "But don't worry, you'll be home soon."

When Sam had climbed through as well, I vaulted over the sill and gave the door one last look. They'd shift the table soon, we had to go.

Outside, we had two choices. We were on the edge of the mine site and could easily run over the hill and away from it, but it was too open. We'd be too easy to chase. We'd have to go back into the mine and lose the guards.

Macca went to run over the hill and I stopped him. "They'll catch us," I said, and pushed him towards the construction site for the recreation centre. "There."

We wove in and out of the buildings until we were behind several crates of besser bricks. All crouching there, I waited until I could see three guards all heading up the hill where they'd assumed we'd run.

Sam gave the radio to Macca. "Say something into it," she said. "Tell them that we've gone down into one of the mines or something, so they all go to the wrong place."

I looked at Sam, surprised; that was a brilliant idea. She winked at me and showed Macca how to work it. He put his finger to his lips for Blanket. "You're being a really good girl," he told her. "But you have to stay quiet, okay? Can you be really brave and stay quiet?" She nodded.

He held the radio to his mouth, his thumb over 'transmit'. "Security," he said, trying to make his voice sound deeper. "They've gone down one of the open shafts."

It felt like eternity while we all collectively held our breath and waited for a reply to see if they'd believed him. "Control. Which one?"

Macca looked panicked for a moment. "Western," he guessed.

"Control. What was that? You're not coming through clearly," the radio buzzed. "Did you say, 'Testing'?"

Macca shrugged at us. "Yes," he said into the mic.

"Control. Got it. Fourteen, Fifteen and Seven head to Ore Testing and Processing and block it off. Get those machines out, as well, the last thing we need is them breaking anything. The rest of you stay put in case anything else goes wrong."

We exhaled. The three men who'd gone up the hill came down again, jogging purposefully out into the yard towards wherever 'Testing and Processing' was.

"I can't believe that worked," Sam said, a big smile on her face. "I'm a genius."

I chuckled, I couldn't help it. I stopped when I saw that Macca was looking at her with complete adoration, though. "Nice idea," he said. She beamed and I glared at both of them. Macca didn't notice, but Sam did and looked suitably guilty.

Macca looked around us. "So how do we get out of here?" he said.

"I wonder if the helicopter is still on the helipad," I thought aloud. "Although it's rather close to the reception centre and there were loads of people there…"

"I need my camera back from that trash compactor, anyway," Sam said. "The memory card might still be okay."

Macca's eyebrows were up. "You guys are going _back_ into the site?"

I pointed up the hill, which was the only way off the site from where we were hiding. "If you go that way, every security guard on the site is going to see you. We have to find another way, and the other way is back into the site."

Sam was already looking around. "There's heaps of trucks and things driving in over there," she said, pointing back beside the reception centre where all the machinery and equipment were pouring in, towed by enormous trucks. Between us and that space was a yard swarming with people. "I'd bet anything those trucks have to go back to Broome. If you can somehow get in the back of one of them… well, they'd have to stop the truck and walk all the way around to the back to find you. You'd definitely have time to get away."

"That could work," Macca said, thinking about it. "But how do we get over there? The yard is _full_ of crims and security guards."

I looked up at one of the tall cranes near us. "Can you see into those cabins?" I asked. They both looked up and shook their heads. "Good, neither can I. That's how we're doing it: there's machinery driving everywhere, no one's going to notice an extra crane moving around."

There were two of them, so we picked the one with the ladder that was facing away from the site and climbed all the way up into it. I sat in the drivers' seat, looking at the controls. "I don't suppose you know how to drive a crane," I asked Macca rhetorically, expecting I knew the answer.

"Well, I got my forklift licence when I was volunteering in the Salvos' warehouse, maybe it's not that different," he said. At our expressions, he clarified. "You know? The Salvation Army. A charity."

Sam squinted at him. "Are you actually the perfect guy?" she asked.

" _Sam_!" I stopped exploring the controls to glare at her.

Macca just laughed. "I get that a lot," he said. "And then girls realise I'm always going to be broke and I'm completely married to my causes."

That wasn't a problem for Sam, I thought. I was far worse than he was for being 'married to my causes'. From her face, I could tell Sam didn't think it was much of a problem, either. I interrupted them. "Why don't we focus on the fact we're potentially in a lot of trouble?" I said, a little rudely on reflection. I didn't care. "Macca, can you look at these and tell me if you recognise anything?"

"Sorry," he said, thinking I was actually angry about them chatting when I needed his help. He looked over the console. "I reckon all of these," he gestured to the complex array of buttons on the panel in front of me, "are all to operate the boom and winch. This thing probably drives kind of like a car with gears, and…" He leaned over me. "Yeah, there's the handbrake. There, now you know as much as I do."

I sighed. I supposed it had been a little too much to hope he'd be able to explain to me how to operate a crane the same way Larson had explained to me how to operate the helicopter. Well, I supposed I'd figure it out. The key was still in the ignition, so I twisted it and the engine started.

Macca had been right to a certain extent: it was rather similar to a car in the way its gears operated. On one side of me there was the handbrake and on the other the gearstick. However, instead of there being a steering wheel, there were four levers in front of me. After playing with them for a moment, I determined the two centre levers lowered and raised the boom, and the outside two steered the crane left and right. That would do. I took the handbrake off and moved forward, very gingerly trying to get the hang of the steering.

"Can I do it?" Blanket asked me, crawling from Macca's lap over to mine. "I want to try."

Macca retrieved her. "It's a bit dangerous," he said, sitting her back on his lap. "We should let Lara do it for us."

"But I like machines," she said.

"Maybe when you grow up you can drive a machine like this," Macca told her, and then rethought that. "But you can do it for an organisation that actually has some ethics."

She didn't understand. "Okay," she said anyway, just to be polite. She watched out the window as I turned the crane around. "Look!" She pointed at the gorge which was now directly in front of us behind the reception centre. "We're high!"

Macca chatted away with her while I tried not to drive the crane directly into any buildings. "Yes, like the birds on your singlet," he said. "All the way up in the sky."

I knocked over a pallet of besser bricks, backed away from it, and went around it. Sam had been sitting on the far side of Macca in the cabin, going through the paperwork on the seat. She smirked and looking out the window as we drove away from the carnage I'd created trying to figure the crane out. "Better call the insurance company."

I scoffed. "You practically have them on speed dial," I reminded her, finally making it out of the construction site into the road that passed by the yard.

Macca watched us. "I still can't believe you guys are so calm," he said. "I'm practically shitting myself here." He then put his hand over his mouth and looked at Blanket. "I said a naughty word," he told her sheepishly. She giggled. God, it was very endearing watching him interact with her. I almost forgave him for having a crush on Sam.

We all fell silent as we drove past the yard with all the men in it. I leaned back in the seat in case anyone below had excellent eyesight. Something inside my daypack was poking me in the back as I leaned on it, but I ignored it. Just when everyone below was watching us slowly crawl by, Macca leaned over me and put his arm out the window, giving them all the thumbs up. Then he blew the horn. The men cheered, and so did Blanket.

"Macca!" I said, "Are you _trying_ to get us caught?"

He sat back down. "There's no way a real crane operator would drive past a huge crowd of people and not do that," he said. "It's a man thing."

"Do it again!" Blanket told him. "Can I do it?"

"Nope," he said to her. "It would make Lara angry." Sam snickered.

I glanced at them both. "Can we _not_ use me to scare children into behaving, please?" I joined the procession of hauled machinery and drove the crane over to the far end of the queue delivered goods. All the other machines were brand new and some of them still had covers over various parts of them. In comparison, the crane was dusty and beaten up. I hoped it wasn't too conspicuous.

Macca shrugged. "You've got to admit you're kind of scary," he said. "Like, intense."

Min had sad something very similar, I remembered. Personally, I thought most of the time I was quite harmless. Maybe he was referring to what I'd done to the guards.

"You should see her when she's _actually_ angry," Sam said, exhaling through pursed lips. "Now _that's_ scary." I privately thought Sam might actually get to see that side of me again if she kept encouraging Macca to flirt with her.

When I'd finished parking the crane, we waited until the next huge truck had been delivered and placed beside us before we all climbed down the central ladder.

Two men were unhooking all the machinery as it was parked. We crouched under the wheel of the jumbo truck beside us, watching all the towing vehicles file past.

"Look at the big wheels!" Blanket was whispering to Macca. "It's like we're ants and this is what ants see when they look at our cars."

I half-listened, watching the procession. None of vehicles leaving from this end of the yard had anywhere for Macca and Blanket to hide on board. All the smaller machinery was being delivered further up the clearing, maybe we'd have better luck up there.

"Come on," I said, gesturing for them to follow me under the oversized equipment. There were some more men further up assisting with the delivery and it became quite difficult to always keep them on the opposite side of the machinery.

At one point, a guy spotted us. He wasn't a security guard and didn't know we were fugitives. "Hey," he said. "What are you doing here? This is a worksite!"

I winced. "I'm sorry I have to do this," I said, watching the confusion on his face as I took him by his collar and smashed his head against hubcap of a nearby wheel to knock him out. I looked down at him. "Someone's going to find him soon," I said. "We don't have much time." I dragged him into the shadow of one of the wheels, anyway.

"That one," Sam said, pointing at a vehicle that had delivered several bobcats. It had a sheet over the area where they'd been stored, presumably to keep dust and debris off them during transit. We waited for the men who were unhooking the vehicles to be busy doing exactly that, and then Macca ran out as it drove slowly back towards the exit, putting Blanket on the tray and then climbing up behind her. She waved cheerfully at us.

I waved back, looking nervously back at the men near us. They hadn't noticed. By the time I looked back at the truck, they'd disappeared under the dust sheet.

I released a breath I didn't know I'd been holding. Blanket and Macca were going to be safe. I felt a little guilty for thinking it, too: I was glad Macca was gone. He was nice to me and just lovely with Blanket, but I didn't like him and Sam around each other.

"Okay," Sam said as soon as they were gone. "Let's rescue what's left of my camera and kick some ass, maybe we'll even get that slave-stone thing."

I laughed at her, pulling her back into the shadow of the wheel as someone passed us. I waited until they were gone. "In that order?"

She grinned. "Sure. You have your priorities, I have mine."

I snorted, ducking my head out from behind the machinery. The reception centre was a short sprint away from us and the coast was clear. "Right, then," I said, giving Sam a gentle push. "Let's get moving."


	16. Chapter 16

Of course everything we needed _had_ to be in the reception centre.

It led through to the yard where the men were allowed to smoke, so there was a constant stream of people wandering in and out of it. They were all directly between us and the back entrance. In addition to the miners milling around, I could see two bored-looking security guards standing near the automatic doors and chatting.

Sam and I sidled up to the enormous air-conditioning unit on the end of the building. She peeked around the corner. "Wow…" she said and quickly pulled back. "Yeah, let's not go that way."

I stuck my head out on the other side of the unit and saw the procession of vehicles up the main road, and behind them, the tarmac. While there weren't as many people on that side, all of them seemed to be ground operations staff and they all had two-way radios on their belts. On top of that, it was just one big wide open area. With the whole front of the reception building made of glass, we couldn't risk being seen.

I leaned back behind the unit, and shook my head at Sam. "That way's out, too."

We stood with ours backs against the humming unit for a moment. I craned my head up at it. It was quite high; I wouldn't have been able to get on top of it alone, but I thought Sam might be able to help. From the air-conditioner to the top of the second-story roof was quite some distance, though. The building was a modern design and there were some strange panels that _might_ be able to hold our weight, but I wasn't certain. I wouldn't really know until we were up there.

"Boost me up?" I asked Sam, who interlaced her fingers so I could step into them. Even that wasn't enough, though. I stepped onto the ground again and looked her up and down, trying to figure out how I could best use her to get on top of the unit. While I was considering her, she struck a pose for me and winked. I rolled my eyes, but I was smiling. I much preferred her flirting with me than Macca. "Bend forward," I said.

She was still grinning. "Well, okay," she said playfully, turning around. "I mean, it's kind of a bad place to go for it, but danger makes it sexier, right?"

I put a hand on her shoulder and pushed her down, chuckling to myself. She groaned under my weight as I stood up on her. "Stand up quickly," I said, "I'm going to step on your shoulder."

She did, and it was enough for me to launch off her and hook my hands on the top of the unit. I climbed up, and then leaned over the edge and helped her up. She was rubbing her shoulder. "That actually kind of hurt," she said. "Remind me to buy some eighties-style shoulder pads or something before we try that again."

Since we were closer to the modern panelling, I leaned over to try and have a look at it. It _looked_ like steel. There was nothing I had on me or around me that I could throw at it to double-check, though. I looked down at the ground below us. We'd probably survive the fall if it couldn't hold our weight, I decided, although Sam would definitely do one of her ankles again.

Oh well, here goes nothing, I thought. I jumped across onto it; it didn't make the sound I expected to hear to when I landed. It wasn't steel, it was some sort of fibrous wood. As I stood there staring down at it, scared to move in case it fell, Sam leapt off the unit to land beside me. "Sam, don't—!"

As she landed, there was a sharp crack and the panel began to collapse.

" _Shit_!" Sam hissed, pushing me forward onto the next panel. There wasn't anywhere else for us to go, we had to keep running along them as they collapsed behind us. Toward the corner of the building the huge vent from the air conditioning unit interrupted the panels and we jumped onto it, holding onto each other and watching the decorative boards drop down and slam into the concrete below.

Sam looked down at them. "That would have been really exciting on film," she said, looking disappointed.

"We'll get your camera back," I promised, peering down over the side of the vent to see if the panels falling had alerted anyone. I wasn't too worried, though, because the loud hum of the air-conditioner would most likely have obscured the sound. I couldn't see anything that looked out of the ordinary, so I turned my attention to the ledge at top of the second level. It was another high reach that I'd need Sam's help for.

Sam saw where I was looking and sighed, bending over so I could use her as a step ladder again. I felt a bit guilty. "I'd let you do it to me instead, but you're not strong enough to support my weight once I'm on top," I told her, stepping up onto her again and reaching up toward the ledge.

She made a noise. "So many great lines to take out of context and nothing to record them with," she lamented as I pulled up off her and swung my leg over the top.

I'd expected to see corrugated iron or some other factory-style roofing once I was up there, but the top of the reception centre was like a sky-scraper. It was a rooftop concourse, and it was divided into several discrete areas. The part near us even some nice plants and a place to dispose of cigarette butts.

I leaned back over the edge and helped Sam stand up.

She dusted off her front and then looked around us. "Nice," she commented. "I always wanted something like this. Maybe we could put an alfresco on the side of the house back home."

It _was_ nice, especially with the clear blue sky and the orange gorge beneath it. To complement the colourful view, the mid-morning sunshine was already warming the skin on my arms. If we weren't on the run from security guards, criminals and some sort of magic, I thought it would be quite pleasant to sit up here and read a book.

Sam was kidding herself if she thought it was be this nice back home, though. "Don't forget this is Australia," I told her as we walked across the first section. "It wouldn't be quite so useful back in England." I glanced over at her. "Besides, don't we need to ask the landlord before we make any changes to the house?"

She made a non-committal noise and then pointed over towards what looked like a beer garden. "Oh, wow," she began, "can you imagine if we had one of—"

We both saw Sean at the same time. Sam's words died on her lips as we both sank behind a large pot plant. He was leaning against the barrier, satellite phone against his ear and a cigarette between two fingers.

"What's he doing up here?" Sam asked, peeking at him between the leaves.

"Well, he owns the place," I pointed out. "We're the ones who aren't supposed to be here." We sat silently for a moment, straining to hear what he was saying. We were too far away. "I can't hear him, let's get closer."

We crept along the row of plants, past some imitation park benches and up near to where he was standing. It was hard to make out what was going on in the conversation, but at least we could hear him properly.

"I understand he's busy," Sean was saying into the phone, "but you've got to figure out a way to get him up here. I'm absolutely certain if we can get him to visit the mine we can get him to support our amendments to the bill." He held the cigarette to his lips and inhaled deeply, blowing it out in a cloud in front of him. It struck me how much more relaxed he was than Diane. He didn't speak for some time, but he still had the phone against his ear and he was making some affirmative noises. I supposed the person on the other end of the phone was speaking at length to him. When he inhaled from the cigarette again, he exhaled in short, sharp puffs. I didn't realise what he was doing until I saw four perfect smoke rings in front of him.

"That's kind of cool," Sam whispered. I didn't like smoking at all, but I had to admit it was an interesting talent for a CEO to have bothered to perfect.

He turned around to lean his back against the barrier with the phone between his shoulder and cheek as he corrected the fit of his watch. "Yes, I'm aware of all that. But you know what Di's going to say… yes, exactly." He held took the phone with his hand again. "Just make sure he's on the next plane out here. We'll have the suite ready. I don't care what you have to do, tell him we'll give a few hundred thousand to his wife's charity or something, I'll leave the details up to you, use whatever funds you need to… okay, goodbye."

He hung up and stared at the phone for a moment before slipping it into the side pocket of his suit pants. It was hot on the roof and he'd taken off his jacket and tie. He was broad-shouldered and narrow-waisted, and there was a thickness about his thighs which suggested he was quite fit despite the smoking. I worried a bit about that, actually. He seemed like the kind of man who might know how to throw a punch, even if he wasn't as hard as Roth.

"I wish I had my bow," I murmured to Sam. I wouldn't even need to worry about whether or not he could fight, then.

Just as I said that, there was a chime from a concrete hut near where he was standing. I had assumed it was just a station for the huge satellite dish and antenna on top of it, but when the doors slid open, I saw it was a lift. There were two guards in it. Sean looked over at them as they approached him.

"Your sister's request," one of the guards told him. "They can't find the kids, so we have to hang around you for a while."

Sean raised his eyebrows. "That's a bit of an overreaction." They shrugged. "Oh, well, we don't want to argue with Di, do we?" All three of them chuckled.

Sam snorted beside me. "You can take out three, right?"

"Probably," I said quietly. "But not at once, and they all have radios."

When Sean turned around to follow the guards back to the lift, I was immediately _very_ glad I hadn't tried to take him out. The back of his shirt just above the waist of his pants had an odd crease – his spine should go in at that point, not out. I knew what that meant because I'd seen Roth's shirts do the same from time to time. "He's got a gun," I hissed to Sam. "Hidden under his shirt." I didn't doubt at all that he knew how to use it, either.

"Seriously?" she said, trying to look for it. "I suppose it makes sense, most of his employees are criminals." Unfortunately, Sean had followed the guards to the lift and turned so she wasn't able to see what I meant. The doors slid closed.

We stood up from behind the plant. "Not too hard to figure out what that phone conversation was about," Sam said. "'Amendments to the bill', 'donations', that sounds like politics to me."

That made me feel uneasy. "Well, if they can make Old Johnson say and do whatever they want him to…"

Sam looked nervous. "I'm starting to realise why the spirits summoned us here," she said. "I mean, not that I begrudge them a nice cave to live in or anything, but getting us out here just for that seemed a bit overkill."

"I just don't know what we're going to be able to stop them, though," I said, leading Sam over past the lift to the far side of the building. "If it's the diamonds that can do it, how on earth are we going to stop people from getting their hands on them? Didn't Diane say there's 50 million tonnes of diamond ore down there?"

Sam frowned. "Well, there must be a way, otherwise what's the point of us being here?"

I sighed, peeking over the barrier at the rubbish compactor below. "First things first, I suppose." I nodded down at it and Sam looked over the edge. From the look on her face, she might actually have just jumped off the second storey down to rescue her beloved camera if I hadn't stopped her. "Hold your horses," I said, and pulled her over to the roof directly above the compactor. "There, at least you won't break something when you jump down."

She pretended to glare at me, but it quickly faded into an excited smile and then lowered herself over the edge. I followed shortly after her, dropping down off the compactor and going to lean on the back door in case anyone tried to come out of it.

There were yellow marks on the concrete and it looked like it might be an area where the reception centre would accept deliveries. I hoped they wouldn't get any while Sam was hunting through the compactor. I leaned anxiously around the corner. We were quite close to the yard; I didn't like it. There were just so many men there, all someone would need to do was shout to get their attention and they'd all be on us.

Sam had the front chute of the compactor open and had already half climbed into it. Her legs were scrambling on the outside as she was reaching around on the inside of it; I wished _I_ had a camera. It was a very cute visual.

Sam made a disgusted noise. "God, you don't even want to know what's in here," she said. "I guess someone in there has a baby."

I grimaced at the thought. "Are you sure you'll actually want your camera back when you find it?"

"Yes!" she said. Pushing out of the compactor, she landed awkwardly in front of it, holding her camera up. "Victory!"

The camera had some sort of half-rotted food smeared on it, though. She scrunched up her nose and brushed it off, and then held it aloft again, beaming at me.

I clapped appropriately.

Wandering over to me, she checked the LCD and the battery, and then switched it on. For a moment the screen was dead, and then the SONY logo flashed up and the menu appeared.

"Wow, it survived a rubbish compactor," I said, genuinely surprised. "I know it's supposed to be tough, but that's… tough."

"Sony: one, Frost: zero," Sam snickered. "It has a pyramid-shaped internal bracing system," she explained to me as I leaned away from the door and pulled it open a fraction to check if there was anyone directly inside it. "And the LCD is flexible so it resists tears and cracks."

"I think Sony has a job for you if you ever decide to give up directing," I said, smiling at her. My smile faded when she got close to me. "Oh, that's right. You were in a rubbish compactor."

She winced. "Do I smell that bad?" I made a so-so motion with my hands. She then launched herself at me and wrapped her arms around my neck. "Let's see how much you _really_ love me."

More than Macca, I thought, but that doesn't stop you being all over him. I kept my mouth shut, though. She saw my expression and frowned at me, letting go. "If it's really that bad, then I'll—"

"It's not that," I said dismissively. "Come on."

There was no one inside, so I pulled the door open. One we'd gone in, though, there was just one long corridor in front of us. At the far end of it, staff were walking past with trays of muffins and jugs of tea and coffee. I remembered the stairs leading up to the level with all the meeting rooms were the about halfway along it.

"They're too far away from us to figure out who we are," Sam said. "Just walk like everything is completely normal and they won't even look at us, they're too focused on their jobs."

I didn't like it, but I followed her instructions. She was right, no one even looked down the corridor. It was still a relief when we reached the stairwell and stepped into it. The stairs were floating and we could see shards of light from the top level; there were guards up there, but I couldn't see how many.

We stood at the bottom of it and I tried to count them. The problem was that they kept moving and I couldn't see enough detail between the stairs to determine if it was the same guards or different ones. In the end, I gave up. "It's those radios," I said. "It wouldn't even really matter how many guards there were up there if I could just stop them from being able to contact everyone else."

Sam thought about it for a second. "Wasn't Alex always on about this stuff? Before we went looking for Yamatai?"

He probably had been, but I'd mostly ignored Alex when he was passionately explaining anything that interested him. He would frequently make jokes about me 'tuning out' and not being 'on the same wave-length' as him. He was right, I didn't really care about machinery, or electrical technology or communications equipment. He would have been handy right now, though. Poor Alex. I shook my head at Sam.

"Yeah, I'm sure of it. Don't you remember? Two-way radios need an antenna-thingy to… repeat the signal, or whatever, I don't really understand. That's why he made Reyes drag that huge antenna onto the deck before we left."

Something occurred to me. "There's a big antenna on top of the building," I said. I took a breath. "You think that's it?"

Sam shrugged. "Worth a shot, right?"

"Right," I said, and led her back out the door again.

Getting back on top of the building was simple in theory, but the compactor was shorter than the air-conditioning unit had been. Sam managed to get me up there, but even dangling my daypack down to Sam to pull her up didn't work.

"You do it," she told me, "it'll just take a second. Here!" She threw her camera up to me and I caught it.

I didn't like leaving her alone, but after Atlantis I couldn't really worry that she wouldn't be able to take care of herself. I turned the camera around and said at the lens. "Sorry about the _terrible_ camerawork you're about to see."

There was no one on the roof as I jogged across it to the lift structure in the centre. I pulled myself on top of it. It was actually a fantastic view; I could see the whole mine site and the beautiful rugged landscape beyond it from up here. I spent a few moments trying to memorise the buildings and their locations before turning my attention to the antenna. I had no idea what to do with it, but at least it wasn't a tower I'd have to climb up like in Yamatai.

"Alex, if you're listening, I could use some help," I said to myself. I didn't expect any sort of reply and I have to admit I was rather relieved I didn't get one.

The antenna was basically a ten-foot pole with a series of shapes poking out of it that bore an amusing resemblance to bent coat-hangers. Each of them had a cord coming out of them, and then there was a thick electrical cord coming out of the bottom of unit. I considered just taking out my pocket knife and cutting through it, but that much wiring probably meant there was significant voltage going through that cable.

I followed the cord down the side of the lift where it fed inside a locked box on the ground. Since I didn't have an axe to pry it open, I stomped against the lock repeatedly until it warped and I could kick the box open. Inside, there was a normal electrical socket and a small switchboard. Taking a breath, I pulled all the wiring out. Then, thinking, I cut all the ends off the cords with my pocket knife and threw them all over the concourse so it would take an electrical engineer a safe period of time to reconnect everything.

I stopped briefly to film my work. "That's vandalism, isn't it?" I asked the camera. "Maybe I should be working for Frost, too."

Jogging back over to the edge, I vaulted down onto the compactor and then the ground.

Sam happily accepted the camera back from me and I smiled at her. "Let's see if that worked," I said, pulling the door open again.

When we made it to the stairs, there were still two guards standing at the top. One of them was picking his morning tea out of his teeth and the other had his arms crossed and was zoned out. They both looked quite bored, just like the guards on the door out front.

"Okay, I'm going to need your help," I told Sam, who looked surprised.

"Yeah… remember the part where I'm a total weakling?" she whispered.

"Gravity will do most of the work," I promised her. "We're going to sneak up behind them." I opened my daypack and took out the USB adaptor for my iPhone, make a sliding knot in it. "Put this over his head like this," I demonstrated on her, "and pull it tight like this around his neck." I didn't slide it all the way on her, but she got the idea. "Do it really quickly, and then give him a good pull back down the stairs. He won't be able to scream and he'll probably get knocked out before he can undo it." I undid the knot, prepared it again and gave it to her.

She looked apprehensive. "I'll try," she said, but she didn't sound very confident. She accepted it from me and hooked her camera onto her belt.

"Step behind me when you pull him, I'll leave the other guard up top." I beckoned her up the stairs. As we approached the back of the two guards, I could see Sam was _shaking._ I put a hand on her back and tried to smile encouragingly at her. She nodded, but didn't look very encouraged.

I mouthed, 'Three, two, one…' and launched myself at the other guard, wrapping my hands around his throat to stop him from screaming. He'd elbowed me twice in the chest before I managed to smash his head against the bannister so hard that he dropped like a rock at the top of the stairs. I winced. No matter how many times I did this, the sound of a skull cracking _still_ made me sick to my stomach.

Sam hadn't done too badly; she'd managed to get the cord around the man's neck, but when he'd fallen down the stairs he hadn't been knocked out. "Help," she said to me. "He's still okay!"

He most definitely wasn't okay. His face was red and all the veins were puffed out on his neck above the cord. He clearly couldn't breathe, either, and when he'd fallen he'd dislocated his shoulder on the side that the knot had slid to. His other hand was clawing weakly at the cord. There wasn't anything we needed to do. "He'll be out soon," was my assessment, and then I gestured for her to follow me.

The scuffle had alerted two other guards, who saw us as soon as we stepped off the stairs into the corridor. One of them ran at us, and the other held the radio to his mouth and pressed the push to talk button. "Ops Nine, Ops Nine," he said into the mic, "they're on the second level of the reception centre. We need backup." He waited for a moment for the reply, and looked surprised when one didn't come. There was some static and perhaps the suggestion of someone talking, but it wasn't intelligible.

"Looks like you're not getting your backup," I told him perhaps a little smartly, and evaded the first guard, slamming him in the back of the knees and then kicking his feet out from underneath him. When he was down, I stomped heavily on his neck. He went down quite easily, but my pulse was _still_ racing. I hated melee: I'd have taken a bow or a gun over being this close to someone in a heartbeat.

The other guard saw how easily I dispatched his colleagues and stopped midway down the corridor. He considered his options, looking at the two bodies at the top of the stairs, and then turned on his tail and ran.

I glanced and Sam and rolled my eyes, taking off after him. He was heading for the boardroom, and I couldn't have any of that, Diane might still be in there. Fortunately he wasn't that fit so I caught him well before he reached the board room. I pushed him over and crawled on top his back as he tried to scramble away.

"Don't kill me," he begged. "I won't say anything, please don't kill me!"

I scoffed, looking back at Sam who had her camera up. I made a disgusted face at the camera and then leaned back over the guard. "Some security guard you are," I said to him. "Do you have handcuffs?"

"Back pocket!"

I felt around in it and pulled them out. Beside us there was a door, and from the sound of it there was no one inside. "Check what's in there," I said to Sam, who opened the door and peered in.

"It's just an empty meeting room."

I pretended to let him get up and then smashed his head into the wall to knock him out. I dragged his body into the meeting room and handcuffed him to a leg of the secured table. Several of the other doors down the corridor lead to the same room, so with Sam's help I dragged the other bodies into the room, too, and dropped one of the guard's shirts over the puddle of blood in the stairwell so it wasn't immediately visible.

I stood up from the last one, dusting off my hands. The meeting room was at the front of the centre, and it had wall to ceiling windows.

I glanced out them to check if anyone had seen us at exactly the right time to see the Frost helicopter clip a light plane that was landing. I gaped at it. It wasn't a proper mid-air crash, but the plane sent the helicopter off course and it spiralled clumsily in the air and then plummeted into the tarmac. After a few seconds, it burst into flames.

"Shit!" Sam said, catching it all on film. "I guess you took out GPS and other comms equipment, too!"

I walked over to the window and didn't see anyone getting out of the helicopter. "I think you can add manslaughter to my list of charges," I said, and then looked back at the security guards. "Although 'murder' is probably more appropriate."

Sam shrugged. "You know they're not going to get police out here," she said. "I bet half of their workforce probably shouldn't even be out of jail yet." She poked out of the bodies with the toe of her boot. "Who knows what they were going to do to us, anyway, right? We'd probably have ended up like Old Johnson."

At the moment, I heard a woman's voice shout, " _Jesus_!"

I knew who it was even before she spoke again, because a surge of adrenaline filled me and I had that tunnel vision. I could imagine myself rushing over to the door, pulling it open and slashing her throat with my pocket knife. The image was so vivid I could almost feel her warm blood trickling through my fingers.

"Diane," I whispered. "Sam, it's back."

"What's ba—oh," she said as she saw my face. "But _why?_ Why now?"

I shook my head. I could _feel_ her approaching the meeting room door and pause there. " _Jesus, fuck_!" she repeated, it sounded like a demand. She was right outside the door.

Sam and I looked at each other and then the dead and unconscious guards, and panicked. There was nowhere in the room to hide. I couldn't even pull furniture over to the door because it was all fixed in place. We just stood there, staring at the door. I hoped to God that she wouldn't notice any of the blood that I might have missed.

Luckily for us she sounded preoccupied, though. "What the _fucking fuck_ , Sean?" she said, her voice shooting up a couple of octaves. "Why did a helicopter just crash on our tarmac?"

Sean was obviously there with her. "I don't know, there's something wrong with the communications equipment," he said, clearly trying to pacify her. "I sent that girl who was doing the Linfox administration off to look for the engineers, she'll find them soon and then we can get it fixed."

"This is fucking ridiculous, I'm sick of people getting injured and dying out here. Eventually someone's going to have family who will come looking for them," she said, and then took a deep breath. "This has got to be to do with those goddamn kids. What a fucking mistake that was to get them out here. China had it right, we should just run tanks over the whole lot of them."

Well, _that_ was a far cry from 'no one's getting injured here, we have shareholders to look after'. Sam and I looked at each other. She had the camera up.

"Well, if the Slave Stone had worked, then we would have—"

"Well, it didn't did it? God knows fucking why. Here, take it, I'm not leaving it in the room with that zombie." I felt her walk down the corridor, away from the door. I exhaled with relief as the intensity of how much I wanted to tear her limb from limb faded. "I'm going up to the roof to see if it's something simple that I can just plug back in," she called back to him and then left.

I heard Sean sigh. "Ugh, fucking bitch, what have I done…?" he muttered to himself as he walked back towards the board room.

Sam and I raised our eyebrows at each other. When I was certain he was gone, I poked my head out of the door. "We had to get him out of there," I said to Sam. "Somewhere public, that stone's too big to fit in his pockets and no one would take a chunk of diamond that big around a pack of convicted criminals, even in a box."

I leaned back inside the room, thinking. I didn't really know anything about Sean except that his family lived in Sydney and that he seemed to like children. Well, that might be enough. "I can't do an Australian accent," I said, and then looked appraisingly at Sam. "There are a few Americans here, though. We're going to do your trick," I said. I walked over to the internal phone on the wall and lifted the handset, putting it to my ear. It was still working. I supposed the phone system must be hardwired. "Call the reception desk and tell them… I don't know, that there's a call waiting for him somewhere from his wife and it sounds urgent."

Sam took the handset from me. "But where could it be waiting? Isn't reception normally where calls wait?"

I shrugged, and just as I was trying to decide if it was a mistake to try that, I caught sight of the evacuation map beside the phone. It seemed like a floor plan of the building, with fire-detectors, alarms and fire extinguishers marked. There was an area downstairs labelled, 'Admin office' with the extension number beside it. "Didn't Sean say something about sending their admin assistant off to look for engineers?" I asked Sam. She nodded slowly, not following me. I took the handset from her and dialled the number on the map. No one answered, and I smiled. I gave the handset back to Sam. "Tell the receptionist there's a call waiting in the admin office and you can't figure out how to work the PA."

She looked dubious, but dialled '0' anyway. I leant my head against hers, listening. "Hi," she greeted the receptionist. "There's a call waiting for Sean in the Admin Office," Sam said. "It's his wife, I think it's urgent, she sounds really upset."

The was a pause. "Then why are you calling from Meeting Room Five?"

Sam looked stricken. "Uh, I can't figure out how to work the PA and I was looking for him."

"Okay," the receptionist said at length. "The call isn't showing up on my switch."

God, I could practically hear my pulse in my ears.

Sam managed a reasonable defence, though. "It's on his private mobile."

"Um, why didn't you just take it with you when you were looking for him?"

Sam glanced at me, panic evident as she desperately searched for a good reason. "The battery's flat," she said. "That's why he was charging it in the office in the first place."

Finally, the receptionist seemed to accept her story. "Okay," the girl said, "I'll call him on his work mobile from ours." There was an awkward silence. "Sorry about giving you the tenth degree, I'm just sick of some of the idiots Frost hires here."

"I _completely_ agree," Sam said, a completely neutral expression on her face as she watched me. "Anyway, his wife sounds really worried, you should let him know it's probably serious."

"Gotcha," the girl said. "Anyway, the PA's not working for some reason which is why you can't call him on it. I'll get him down. Thanks." The call terminated.

We hung up the phone and I had to walk around a little to clear some of my adrenaline. Sam leaned against the wall, taking some deep breaths. "Let's stick to caves," she said. "This place is stressing me out."

A set of footsteps ran down the hall.

We looked at each other. "Quick, let's get that stone," I said.

The corridor was empty, and we ran along it to the board room. When I opened the door, though, I'd completely forgotten Sean had the two security guards until I practically crashed into them. The box was still on the table in front of where Diane had been, with Old Johnson sitting placidly beside it. There was something… I inhaled sharply. There was something about it, something different than before.

"What—?" one of the guards said, looking as surprised as we were. He reached out to grab me, but I ducked out of his grasp and elbowed him in the ribs, kneed him in the stomach and drove my palm upward into his jaw. He fell without so much as a gasp.

Sam was shrieking; the other guard managed to grab her and pin her against the wall. "Don't come closer, or I'll—" he began in some sort of accent. He didn't have time to finish his threat, though, because I heaved one of the big leather swivel chairs off the carpet and threw it at him.

It connected solidly with his back and both of them fell onto the ground. I rushed over to help Sam up while the guard lay on the floor, groaning. "Don't let him get up," I told her, and then rushed over to Old Johnson.

I shook him. "Can you hear me? Can any part of you hear me?" I tilted his jaw up to look into his eyes. There was absolutely nothing about him that showed any sign of consciousness apart from the fact he was upright. I stood back, considering him. He'd be too heavy for me to carry and I didn't think Sam and I could get him out of here by ourselves. As happy as I was that Blanket was safe, I could really have used Macca's big muscles just then. Well, there was nothing we could do to help Old Johnson at that moment. We'd have to wait for another opportunity.

As the guard was rolling upward, Sam tentatively pushed him with her foot, looking nervous. He groaned.

The box was beside Old Johnson, so I picked it up.

Immediately, I was aware or something different about it. It was _magnetic_. I felt my hands being drawn toward it like it was pulling at them, sucking me in. As I took the lid off to redundantly check it was there, I was dimly aware of alarm bells going off in my head. Even so, I just couldn't tear my eyes away from it.

"Something's wrong," I said to Sam. "Something's wrong with this stone."

I wanted to touch it. The skin on my palm was practically tingling with how much it wanted to feel the weight of the stone there. A sinuous voice inside my head was telling me that nothing would happen, I'd touched it once before, right? I could just take a couple of moments to lift it out of the box and make sure it was in one piece. I didn't, though, because the rest of me was in vile opposition to that voice, recoiling in horror away from it.

As an internal war waged itself inside my skull, I came to a realisation: this wasn't like the Scion or the spirits or the cave. This object was _evil_. But why was I only discovering this now? I'd touched it before, and felt nothing.

I don't know what would have happened next if the doors to the boardroom hadn't flown open and Sean hadn't come bursting through them. The shock of it was enough to snap me out of whatever trance I was in.

He stood and stared at me for moment. "You!" he said, looking directly at me as realisation dawned on his face. "It was _you!_ " He saw what I was holding, and his anger turned to panic. "Put that box down!" he ordered me.

Instead, I put the lid on it, shoved it hurriedly in my daypack, and ran towards Sam.

When I didn't stop, he drew his gun on me and fired a couple of rounds. They didn't hit me, but I'd run in front of the window and the shots completely shattered it. At least we had a way to escape now. "Jump!" I said to Sam, and we both leapt out of the window.

The ground was further away than I'd thought it would be, and was solid concrete. I landed heavily, winded for a moment. I didn't care about myself, though. "Are you alright?" I said, pulling Sam up. "How's your ankle?"

"Ow," she said. "The important thing is that I'm not full of bullet holes."

As if to accentuate her point, the sound of a bullet skimming past my face and ricocheting off the ground nearby made us look up. Sean was aiming at us, and I could see a long silencer at the end of his pistol.

"Shit!" I pulled Sam back against the wall of the building.

The window shattering alerted everyone who'd been working on the crashed helicopter in the centre of the tarmac, and they'd all turned around to look at us. Someone was shouting, and then several people began to run toward us.

"So, I guess we're leaving now?" Sam said as grabbed her hand and pulled her around the back of the building.

I looked around frantically for somewhere to go, and my eyes rested on that golf buggy-like vehicle that Diane and Sean had used to show us the mining site. "God, I hope you don't need keys," I told it, running over to it and feeling around the steering wheel. It didn't, it was button operated. "Get in," I told Sam, and started the engine as soon as she had.

I sped down the road beside the yard, aware of the fact we'd driven out into the open and _everyone_ could see us.

Someone in the yard yelled something, and then all the men turned around to look at us. I pushed as hard as I could on the accelerator. "Come on, come on…" I told it, glancing down at the speedometre. It only went up to 40 on the dial, but even with the needle pressing into the red zone, I could feel the vehicle continuing to speed up. The engine was making a really unhealthy noise, though. I hoped it would hold out long enough to get us away.

The way out of the site was via the road next to the tarmac, but when I reached the main road, I saw how easy it would be for any one of those people on the tarmac to cut us off. I couldn't drive out that way, and I didn't like our chances of driving through the rugged terrain surrounding the camp on this thing. Our best chance was to drive around and try and lose everyone, and then sneak out after dark.

Diane had mentioned something about there being kilometres and kilometres of mining shafts underneath the site; that sounded great. We could lose them in there.

Spinning around, I drove at top speed along the road with various people chasing after us until I reached a mining shaft. "Light, please!" I said to Sam as we sped into it. She turned the forward light on in the camera so I could see where I was driving.

We'd been speeding for a minute or two when the shaft began to bend. I thought it was going to be a really soft turn, so I didn't slow down enough. As a result, I completely misjudged it and we slammed into the wall of the shaft, fortunately not at top speed. I still flew forward out of the buggy, though, and skid across the ground. Sam ended up not too far away from me, and her camera was even further up the shaft with the light shining away from us. I felt around for her. "Sam, are you okay?"

She groaned. "I hope you weren't too attached to my face," she said. "I'm not sure I still have one."

I wasn't sure if she was kidding, because she had a propensity to joke about really serious problems. I felt up her neck to her face, feeling the shape of her nose, her cheekbones and her mouth. They were all still fine, and I could feel her smiling. She was _joking_. I put my palm flat across her in-tact face and gently pushed her in it. "You scared me," I told her sternly, and then hauled myself off the ground over to her camera. "Let's keep going."

Although the mine had been cut, it seemed like none of the usual infrastructure was here; there were no lights, no tracks, no signs… nothing I would have expected. Even the mines near Atlantis had had those things. Perhaps it was something to do with that new technology Diane had been talking about where machines would be doing all the work.

At several points the shafts branched out from each other, and I had no idea how we were going to be able to find our way back out. I supposed it didn't matter, though. When people came down looking for us _they_ would need to split up to search and we could follow the trail of them back to the surface.

"Isn't there supposed to be a part of this place where they actually, you know, _mine_?" Sam asked me, filming shaft after shaft of nothing. "This part seems like a long corridor leading nowhere."

As soon as she's said that, we reached a dead end.

I got Sam to shine the camera on the wall in front of us. "Funny, I thought she said the mine was finished," I said. "Why would they leave a dead end if it was?" When I spoke, the sound echoed in a strange way.

Sam panned around us and her forward light disappeared into a hole above our heads. We looked up in to is, and then Sam sighed at me and bent over. I laughed. "Sorry," I said, hoisting myself up on her and climbing up into it. There were no foot or hand holds, but it was narrow. "Press against the walls and edge yourself up," I told her, trying as hard as I could to lift her up into the hole while wedging myself into it. At least she weighed basically nothing.

We managed to make it to the top and I pulled myself out; we were inside a big cavern. I couldn't see anything, though, but the way the sound echoed suggested how big and open it was.

I gave Sam a hand up and she panned around us. She stopped panning abruptly. " _Really?"_ she said, and then showed me the LCD screen with an error message.

I didn't recognise the cavern at first, it just looked like any other. It was a combination of Sam's camera error and an odd glow burning from inside my daypack that I realised we were in a cave full of paintings.

I was hesitant to take the stone out given the way it had been making me feel. "If I look like I'm going to touch it, don't let me," I told Sam, who had been busy making frustrated noises and fiddling with her camera.

She looked up at me. "Okay…" she said. "You already touched it before, though."

"This is different," I said, unzipping my bag and taking the box out. "It's working now, I don't know why it wasn't before."

I took a breath, and lifted the lid on the box.

Immediately, the whole cavern _lit up_. Unlike before, though, the paintings weren't orbiting slowly around the rock. They all crowded to the far side of the cavern as far away from us as they could get.

"I don't think they like it," Sam commented. "I wonder why that is."

"The bigger question is why Diane and Sean are interested in this cave enough to drill up into it," I said. "Although I think it's clear it has something to do with this," I nodded at the stone, "and them," I nodded at the terrified paintings. With some effort I managed to put the lid back on the box, and the beautiful soft glow faded from the walls. I slung the daypack over my shoulder again.

Sam turned back to me from staring at them. "Macca was right," she said. "This place _isn't_ safe from Frost International."

I remembered what Old Johnson had said to me the night before. "Old Johnson said the same thing," I told her. "Before they hypnotised him, or possessed him, or whatever they did to him." I pressed my lips together. I could only think of one person who might be able to answer my questions, and I didn't think she'd been too keen to. "Amanda might know what all of this is."

Sam snorted. "Yeah, good luck getting her to tell you anything," she said.

I shrugged. "I'll work something out."

At least we knew the way out of the cave and we wouldn't have to fight our way back to the surface. I was thankful for that, because my ribs were really hurting and I couldn't even remember what had happened to them. It was all just one adrenal haze.

As we were leaving the cavern, I noticed there was one painting that hadn't lost its gentle glow. It was the bird. It was watching us leave, tilting its head curiously at me. When it saw me looking, it flew across the wall over to near where we were standing.

I walked up to it. It didn't feel at all like the stone. This close, I could almost reach out and—

"Amanda told you not to touch it," Sam warned me. "She'd probably know."

"Amanda's not that fond of me," I reminded Sam. "She probably doesn't have my best interests at heart."

I spent a few moments wondering if touching the bird was the same as touching the Slave Stone and almost just walked away from the painting. It followed me, flicking its tail.

I pointed at it. "Don't tell me you think that's evil," I said to Sam.

She shrugged. "Maybe it's a clever disguise," she suggested. "Although it _is_ kind of cute."

I turned back to it, considering it again. Why wouldn't Amanda want me to touch the bird? I wondered if not wanting me to touch it was her self-interest and that nothing bad would happen to me at all. On the other hand, she was grumpy and nasty but she didn't seem, well, evil. Maybe she'd been doing me a favour by warning me about the paintings. I'd had all that bother with the drawing I'd done of one from Wollemi, after all. Then again, on reflection, it wasn't _that_ much bother and it _had_ led me here.

I exhaled. There was really only one way to find out what it would do, if it would do anything. Wondering if I'd regret the decision, I reached out toward the cave wall.


	17. Chapter 17

I reached out and placed my palm flat against the bird.

Both Sam and I were flinching as I did it; I'm not entirely sure what I expected would happen when I touched it. Whatever I expected, what actually happened was rather an anti-climax.

The painting was warm. I could feel each line of its concentric circles along my skin, but it was a gentle feeling, like the warmth of someone's body. There was also… something else about it. Something _alive._ It squirmed in my hands like an actual bird would and I could feel the pitter-patter of its tiny heartbeat through its non-existent ribs. It was so real that when I pulled my hand from the wall I actually expected that I would be holding a bird. I didn't, though, my palm was empty. I stared at it.

"Look!"Sam said, pointing to the wall.

The bird was gone.

At first I thought just the glow might have disappeared and it was too dark to see the paintings without it. I took Sam's camera from her and shone the forward light on the wall, combing it to see if I could find the bird. I couldn't. It had completely disappeared.

I held the camera back at Sam. "It was struggling under my hand," I said, feeling a little guilty. "God, I hope I didn't hurt it."

Sam accepted the camera from me. "Maybe you've absorbed it or something," Sam suggested. "And now you have those weird powers Amanda has."

I thought about how I felt; I didn't feel like I had any special powers. I couldn't even feel the strange double-self I'd had occasionally since venturing into Wollemi. All I was starting to feel were the injuries I'd probably sustained while we'd been fleeing the Frosts. "I don't _feel_ magical," I said, pushing gingerly against my own ribs one by one. I grimaced. "Actually I think I've done a couple of ribs." When Sam stepped towards me to check for herself, I waved her away. "I'm fine," I said. "Let's just get out of here and find out what happened at the blockade."

We knew the way out, and since we were both lucid it took a lot less time to surface than it had the first time we'd been in there. I kept thinking about that bird painting, though, and occasionally I would catch sight of what I thought was fluttering or some shape on the wall that resembled it. Every time I checked, though, it was nothing.

At least Sam found entertainment in my behaviour. As soon as we'd made it far enough away from the paintings, she started filming again. "Are you sure you're not still tripping out?" she asked as I tried to surreptitiously feel a divot in the wall without her noticing. It wasn't the bird, either.

When we made it out onto the the gorge, the sun was in the middle of the sky and just so very bright. There were more clouds than there had been earlier, but they hardly made any difference. I still I had to hold my arm up to shield my face from it as we climbed walked slowly out of the cave. Fortunately for her, Sam had been staring at the bright LCD and wasn't as disoriented as I was. "Hey, look," she said, her camera down the side of the gorge. "In daylight you can actually see the whole mine from here."

When my eyes adjusted to the light I followed where she was looking. The mine stretched over quite a large chunk of what was otherwise beautiful and untouched natural landscape. It was actually a huge pity to see the blocky buildings and the jumbo trucks interrupting the vista. Macca was right, too, they _were_ very close to the river. That was interesting. Macca would have been horrified to learn how pleased that made me; it gave us a great way to get into and out of the mine.

"The river might come in handy," I said to Sam, as we followed the track that lead downward.

I was still thinking about the river when we walked over the crest of the gorge. Sam's gasp and, "Oh, my God…" made me look up from the rocky path in front of me. My stomach dropped as I caught sight of a mish-mash of coloured debris on the road in the distance. I jogged up to the edge so I could get a better view.

The blockade was _wreckage;_ it was like a hurricane had torn through the camp. There were tarps, suitcases and clothes just everywhere. The tents on the edge of the camp had fared better than all the ones on the road which were now covered by sand and tyre tracks. There was absolutely no one there; no one at all. Even the procession of mining vehicles along the road had already stopped. I couldn't imagine where everyone had gone, though, because most of the cars were still parked up the shoulder of the road. It just looked like it had suddenly been abandoned.

"God, what have they done to everyone?" I looked at Sam. "Try the zoom, can you see anyone at all?"

Sam fiddled with the settings and panned around, shaking her head. She looked over her LCD for a moment. "What do you think happened?"

"I have _no_ idea."

It had been difficult for me to get the parallels between Diane and Natla out of my head, so when I imagined whole hoards of people going missing, all I could think was armies like the ones Natla had described. Then I thought about the slave stone in my daypack and worried about armies full of people hypnotised like Old Johnson. God, what a thought. I hoped everyone had just been taken to a safer location, but with all the multitude of clothes and belongings scattered everywhere I knew that couldn't be the case. At least I couldn't see any bodies. Small mercies, I supposed.

"Let's get down there," I said, and ignored my aches and pains to scramble down the gorge. Once I made it down and across the river I had planned to run the distance between the gorge and the blockade, but the ground was soft sand. I supposed it didn't matter anyway, since I couldn't very well leave Sam behind while we didn't know what was going on. "Come on, slowpoke!" I called to her as she awkwardly climbed up the bank of the river.

"Hey, you try climbing this with a camera in your hand," she said, finally making it up the side and turning to look at the crocodiles who were lazing in the sun a little further upstream. "How amazing is that? They don't even care about us."

I grinned. "You could always clip the camera on your belt, you know."

She scrunched up her nose and looked over her shoulder at me, gesturing at the crocodiles. "Uh, then I would miss totally awesome shots like this." She filmed them for a few seconds. "If I'm not holding it, the frames get all messed up."

"What an awful tragedy that would be," I said dryly to her, but I was smothering a smile. "Like _the one at the blockade_."

"Okay, okay," she said, turning back toward me. "Let's go and see what happened."

We reached the kitchen area first; the fire was going with no one to tend to it. Just to be safe, I doused it with the cooking water. A huge cloud of smoke rose into the air, though, and I regretted doing it. That would be visible from the mine. I looked back toward the mine nervously; hopefully no one would notice.

Sam had already started walking into the debris, her camera angled at the ground. "This is insane," she said. "There's stuff everywhere – look, someone's cell." She bent over and picked it up. "People don't usually just leave those behind."

Macca's tent was one of the ones that had been run over. I walked up to it, thinking he'd probably appreciate us collecting his belongings. I fought with myself for a moment over it, vengefully thinking I should just leave them here. In the end I couldn't do it, though. Whatever he had going with Sam wasn't his fault, he didn't know. _Sam_ should be the one having her belongings left behind. I knelt down and crawled inside Macca's collapsed tent, pulling his bag out. I gave it to Sam. "Since you're so fond of him," I told her. "You can have the honour of carrying his bag."

She didn't snap back at me, though. In fact, she didn't say anything about it until we were hunting around for our own bags, and only when I caught her surreptitiously trying to search though his belongings. "What exactly are you looking for in there?" I asked her, probably sounding a lot more annoyed than I had intended to.

"Didn't we already go over this?" she muttered to herself before staring straight at me and saying very flatly, "His underwear, Lara. So I can imagine him in it." She held up a pair of car keys.

I was so very angry at that moment, because her finding those meant that I just looked like some paranoid, jealous girlfriend. I didn't really think it was jealous or paranoid to be upset when my girlfriend actually flirted with other people right in front of me, and I hated being made to feel that way.

I didn't want to go into it now, though. Or at all, really. I just wished she'd stop and it would all just go away. "I hope his car's still here, then," was what I said, and resumed my search for the tent.

Sam looked like she wanted to push the point, but I deliberately didn't engage her on it. If we'd discussed it at that moment, with the way I felt I would have blasted her. Instead, we picked through the wreckage for our own belongings.

Our own bags were still inside our tent, but it had been dragged some distance from where we'd left it and had collapsed. It wasn't torn, though, so I rolled it back up and put it into my backpack and then crammed it all in my suitcase. We were lucky we'd chosen to pitch away from the road.

Sam was sitting on her own suitcase going through her travel wallet while I packed up. "It's weird," she said, little trace of her previous frustration in her voice. "Nothing gone, you know? I had some money stashed in here and it's all still there."

"Well, it obviously happened quickly," I pointed out. "I don't think whoever or whatever did this would have had enough time to search everyone's belongings for cash."

We were walking up the main road dragging our cases behind us when I saw some sort of animal struggling under the wheels of one of the huge abandoned four wheel drives. I put the suitcase down and rushed up to help it. As I did so, it _fluttered_ under the car.

"What's wrong?" Sam was saying behind me as I bent over to look for it. The bright sunlight had cast an equally deep shadow under the car, and I couldn't see anything at all in it. I lowered myself onto my stomach and edged under the chassis, looking for the bird that had been injured. In the process I accidentally put some weight on my ribs. It hurt, but not as much as it would if they were broken. Maybe they were okay, after all. I reached up my hand in front of me and felt around for the bird.

"I think the trucks ran over some wildlife," I said to Sam. "I saw it fly under here."

Sam's face appeared beneath the other side of the car, complete with camera. "Okay, so, like, you're happy to eat a cow that's staring at you and I know you've killed and eaten all sorts of random animals…"

I gave her a look. "Well, it's suffering," I said, and then thought carefully about Sam's comment while I was feeling around the shadows of the wheel for whatever it was. I wasn't sure exactly why I was so intent on helping the bird. In a different situation it would have been my arrow that had crippled it.

She crawled underneath with me. "Well, I'm not missing this shot," she said. "Lara Croft: Environmentalist Extraordinaire. Defeats the evil miners, saves helpless wildlife. It'll be a blockbuster."

" _Sam_ ," I said, but I was happy that she was her cheerful self again after the tension earlier. "I can't find it. Can you turn the…" My sentence tapered off because I could hear some sort of motor. I stopped what I was doing and looked at Sam, who had clearly also heard it as well. It was in the distance, but was approaching us.

After several seconds it became clear it was a helicopter.

"Maybe the flying doctors or whatever they call it?" Sam suggested. "I saw a documentary on that, once. Australia is so big that they have air ambulances. Maybe the Frosts found the guards."

"Maybe," I said, but I didn't really think the Frosts would let paramedics on site. The helicopter passed quite closely over us, and I was very, very glad I was under one of the cars. Despite the fact I was well hidden, though, I couldn't help holding my breath.

I had expected the sound of the rotors to disappear off into the distance, but it didn't. It hovered over the remains of the blockade. From under the car I could see random light clothes, bags and other debris blowing along the road, and I now understood why it looked like a hurricane had hit the camp. There must have been helicopters. Loads of them.

"What're they doing?" Sam whispered to me, as if they'd be able to hear us over the rotors. "Do you think they're looking for us?"

"Yes," I said. But by some miracle we're under this car, I thought. Something occurred to me as I looked forward at the debris blowing around us. I reached over to Sam and pushed the forward light button on Sam's camera, angling it around the bottom of the car while it was still in her hands. There was nothing hiding anywhere under the car. There wasn't even any sign there's ever been a bird there. No scuffling, no feathers, nothing.

"Maybe it went out the other side?" Sam suggested. "And flew away? Why is it so important, anyway?"

"It's not that," I said, taking the camera completely from her. I held the it in the shadow of the wheel, twisting the lens upwards towards the sound and keeping the LCD in front of me. The helicopter was black and I could see the Frost International logo. "God, how many of those do they have?" I wondered aloud, and then showed Sam. "It _is_ looking for us. I shouldn't have put out that fire."

Sam took the camera off me and stuck it out her side of the car, continuing to film.

I was propped up on my elbows, staring at my hands clasped in front of me. A disappearing bird that lead us to safety right as Frost's helicopter was looking for us. That had to be something to do with the painting.

"I really wish I'd spent seven years researching Australian mythology before we got involved in this," I said cryptically to Sam. "At least then I'd eventually understand all the things that were happening like I did in Yamatai."

Sam swung the camera around to face me. She wasn't making the connection, probably because I hadn't explained what I was thinking properly to her. I looked between Sam and the lens. "Sam, I think that bird painting just saved us."

She looked up from the LCD at me and we locked eyes for a moment. She sighed. "Well, at least the magic doesn't want to kill us with ten foot spears this time around," she said. "Or have some ancient queen do awful things with my body." She winced. "That didn't come out the way I meant it to."

I smirked at her. Our faces were really close and I considered giving her a quick kiss, but then remembered I was angry about her and Macca and decided to leave it. "Yes, this magic is a _vast_ improvement on the last two lots," I said. "Except for whatever is in my daypack."

The helicopter rotors powered up and there was a surge in the debris spiralling around. "It's going," Sam said, but she needn't have told me; I could hear it moving away.

When we were absolutely certain it had gone, we crawled out from under the four wheel drive and surveyed the road around us. I'd been a little worried the helicopter might have dropped off a couple of guards to pick through the blockade for us, but that didn't appear to be the case.

We collected our bags from where we'd left them and headed further up the road to Macca's car. Sam took the keys out of her pocket and zapped it, but instead of unlocking it just made a faint clicking noise. Sam looked at me. "That sounds like…" she reached out and tried the sliding door handle. It slid easily open. She laughed. "Trust _Macca_ not to lock his car," she said, throwing Macca's bag on one of the seats. "He's such a totally hippy that—" She _screamed_ , jumping back toward me and dropping her case.

"What is it?!" I stepped between her and the car, heart pounding. Were there guards hiding in Macca's car waiting for us?

"There's something—" she began. "I hope it's not a, like, a killer koala or a poisonous emu or an _enormous_ hairy spider whatever this country wants to kill us with…"

I groaned, taking a deep breath. "God, Sam," I said to her. "You scared the life out of me. I half expected Sean Frost to jump out of the car with his gun." I gingerly approached the car, anyway. Australia _did_ have venomous animals and I _should_ probably be careful. I took a step up into it, leaning very slowly over the seat so that I didn't startle whatever had scared Sam.

As I peered over the headrest, I saw a tangle of dark brown hair and two brown eyes. Behind them was a familiar grey singlet. " _Blanket!_ " God, what on earth? Why wasn't she with Macca?

"Macca told me to stay here," she said in the tiniest little voice. It sounded like she had been crying. "He told me, I'm not being naughty."

"You poor thing, of course not," I told her, beckoning her over and lifting her into my arms. It hurt my ribs a little, but I ignored the discomfort. She wrapped her arms around my neck the way she had to Macca; she must still have been crying because I could feel dampness on my shoulder. She'd also been holding something which was now poking me in the stomach. For her sake I ignored that, too.

Sam put a hand on her chest and took a deep breath. She came up beside me and stroked Blanket's hair. "What were you doing in the car?" she asked her. "Where's Macca?"

"The police took him," she started to cry again. "There were so many. He said he'd come back!"

It couldn't have been more than an hour or two. As much as I didn't want to upset her further, I needed to know more. "Where did they take him?" I asked her. "Did he say?"

"Derby," she said. "There was writing on their cars."

I tried to piece together what had happened; Macca and Blanket had obviously been caught at the blockade. I wasn't sure how that could have happened as they were supposed to be on the truck driving through it. Macca had had the time and the opportunity to give Blanket instructions, and he wouldn't have left her by herself unless he was very, very worried about the alternative.

I wanted to ask Blanket if she thought he was hurt and if she knew what had happened to everyone else, but she was already so upset. I didn't want to frighten her, too.

Sam was already stroking her matted hair. "It's okay, Sweetie," she said. "You're safe now, we'll take care of you."

"We have to go to Derby," I told Sam, and then looked at the car. As much as I wanted to let Blanket cry herself out on my shoulder, there was no way Sam was driving. I patted Blanket's back. "I'm going to give you to Sam, okay?" She sat back, wiping her nose on her wrist and nodding. Sam winced at that, but accepted her anyway. When she did, the object that had been poking me in the stomach fell out from between us and landed half-buried in the sand.

I'd seen Macca with it, it was his satellite phone. I bent down and picked it up; there really wasn't anyone I could call with it, now, but it was handy to have it. "I need to get one of these," I said to Sam, showing her what it was and clipping it on the side of my belt.

I lifted the rest of our bags into the car and slid the door closed as Sam carefully climbed into the front seat with Blanket. I hopped into the driver's seat myself and adjusted the chairs and mirrors.

The car had plenty of petrol on it, but I didn't know exactly where we were going. "There's no reception out here and I have no idea where Derby is," I confessed. "I hope there are signs."

Sam shrugged. "It's not like there are tonnes of roads out here, anyway," she said. "If we don't drive back to the mine, we're probably going the right way."

"Derby has a beach," Blanket told us. "And dolphins. It's _Mowanjum_ mob there."

"It sounds like a nice place," Sam told her. "Have you ever seen a dolphin?"

"Yes!" Blanket said with audible excitement, forgetting her tears. "I even _touched_ one!"

"How did that happen?" Sam asked her. As I pulled out onto the road, Blanket launched into a story about touching the dolphin. Sam pretended to listen intently, but looked over the top of Blanket's head at me, smiling.

"Grandpa was story-telling there," she said. "In Derby. They do _yilimbirri junba_ there and grandpa always plays." I didn't know exactly what she meant, but not knowing the odd word didn't affect her story. "Some other mob play there, too, but grandpa is better. Everyone says." She puffed out her chest, looking very proud of that. "Sometimes there are _ray_ talkers, too."

Sam was grinning. "But didn't you say something about dolphins?"

"Oh, yeah," Blanket said. " _Ray_ talkers, they have water Dreaming. They make the dolphins come, and grandpa is friends with some. Grandpa asked them to help because I'd never seen dolphins before. It didn't work though," she said, looking disappointed. " _Ray_ talkers say it doesn't work for me. It works for everyone else but not for me."

"They how did you touch one?" I asked her.

"Grandpa took me on a tinny later and we just waited and waited and waited until they came. It took _hours_. But them they came to meet us and I touched one!"

"I've never touched a dolphin," Sam told her. "What did it feel like?"

"Wet," she said, wrinkling her little nose. "And they smell funny." She paused and then said. "You're really dirty." She was looking at Sam's t-shirt.

Sam looked over her head at me, and I couldn't help but laugh. "That's a good description of Sam," I said, grinning across at her over Blanket's head. She narrowed her eyes at me, but then went back to smiling. It felt good to joke with her.

Blanket told us some more stories on the way into Derby, and all of them contained Old Johnson. I thought about him trapped in the Frost International Mine, looking for all the world like the 'zombie' Diane had called him. God, I couldn't leave him there. He was clearly all Blanket had, her stories weren't about anyone else. What would have become of _me_ if I hadn't had Roth after my parents had died? I just had to try and save Old Johnson, not just for his sake, but for this little girl.

Sam saw my expression. "You're a million miles away again," she said, and then looked at Blanket. "I don't think Lara is listening to you. That's not very nice, is it?" Blanket giggled.

"Just thinking," I said, smiling. My smile faded when I remembered Roth was gone and Sam was all I had, now. Just the idea of losing her, however that happened, God, I just couldn't even bear to think about it. Picturing her and Macca together actually physically hurt me. She wouldn't leave me for him, though, would she? Even if he was happy to show her off in public? Sam and I were practically part of each other, and I knew she'd loved me for a long time. I hoped she wasn't finding the reality of having me was different than the fantasy. What an awful, awful thought. I put it out of my mind and kept driving.

It wasn't too far before we hit sealed road, but it was only wide enough for one car. It was straight enough for me to risk speeding, however, so I did. By the sound of it, speeding would be the least of my worries if the police picked me up.

While I was busy worrying what we'd find in Derby, the phone on my belt vibrated. Sam heard it, too. We looked at each other. "Should I answer it?" I asked her. "I mean, who could it be, really?"

"Well, we know the Frosts have his number," she reminded me.

It rang a few more times, and eventually I just decided to answer it. "Everyone quiet," I said, answering it with my thumb and putting it against my ear. I didn't say anything though, I just listened.

"Blanket, honey, is that you? It's Macca."

I exhaled with relief. "Macca!" I said. "You're okay!" I smiled across at Sam who was looking just as relieved as I was. I should probably have passed her the phone since I was driving, but since it was Macca, I decided not to.

"I know that accent." I could hear the smile in his voice. "Blanket's okay, isn't she?"

I looked at Sam and Blanket. "Yes," I said. "What on earth happened? It's so good to hear you're alright."

"Uh…" There was some speaking in the background, and he sounded a bit distracted. "I'm actually only allowed two minutes. I'm at the Derby police station, my parents are posting bail but it hasn't come through yet. We'll talk more details later, yeah?"

"Okay…" I said, guessing he was being listened to. "We're on our way. Are we…" I worried about how to phrase it without implicating either of us if there _were_ people listening. "Are we going to have any trouble of our own when we arrive?"

He paused. "I can't say for sure," he said. "But I don't think so, Frosts' people aren't here from what I can see. You weren't at the blockade, either. I'm known to the cops, I have heaps of charges. You guys are clean so you should be fine."

Clean so far, I thought, thinking of all the fuss we caused at the mine. Sam was right about one thing, though, I very much doubted they would report us to the police. If they did, they'd need to allow police on site and that was not going to happen. They seemed much more likely to be the type to take care of any problems themselves, just like Natla had. "We're bringing your car and your bags," I said, realising I hadn't told him yet.

He laughed. "You're a champion," he said. "I owe you one. See you soon."

I wanted to ask him so much more about what had happened, but I figured we could talk later when he wasn't in custody. I hung up the call and put it back on my belt.

"You know, that's actually really sweet," Sam said wistfully. "Police only let you make one phone call, right? He was calling to make sure Blanket was okay."

"Actually, I think that's only in the movies," I told her neutrally. "He said his parents posted his bail, so I'm guessing he called them first."

"Oh," she said. She looked a bit disappointed.

Derby wasn't so far away, and it was small enough that I didn't need to get out my phone and bother with the GPS in order to find the police station. There were a few people still hanging around outside it, but it was such a small building I couldn't imagine how they would hold everyone from the blockade in custody.

I hadn't been expecting to see him so I didn't recognise him straight away, but Macca was out the front leaning on a palm tree. He saw the car and waved at us. There were quite a few cars along curb so we had to park quite some distance away from the station.

He came running up the car as we got out. "Macca!" Blanket shrieked, and scrambled down from Sam to rush up to him and wrap herself around one of his legs.

"Hey, there," he said and put a hand on her head, and then walked her awkwardly over to us. She squealed with delight and stood on one of his feet.

"That's so adorable," Sam said with a big grin as she took her camera off her belt and pointed it at him, but the grin fell away when he looked up at us from Blanket. He had a black eye, a split lip and a really nasty bruise on his cheekbone. "Oh, my God!"

"Hi, guys," he said, looking as if he was enjoying our shock. "How's the weather?"

"Ouch!" I said, "What happened to you? I have a first aid kit in there." I pointed into the car.

He held up a hand. "I'm good," he said. "I got the other guy better. Except now I have an assault charge to go with all the other ones. You got out of the mine okay, then?"

Sam and I looked at each other. "Yeah, I took the Slave St—" I thought better of trying to explain everything to Macca. "The huge diamond thing. We had some resistance, but we managed."

He nodded, looking pointedly at the blood on my t-shirt. He didn't say anything about it, though.

"Oh, that's right," I said, "I'd better get out of this."

While I opened the side door and rifled around in my suitcase, Sam asked him, "So what happened? How did you get caught? Where is everyone?"

"Keep walking!" Blanket said sternly to Macca, who marched around in a circle with Blanket on his feet as he answered Sam.

"The cops were still arresting people when the trailer went through, and we had to stop to wait for another truckload of people to be driven off. There were all these helicopters and they were catching people who tried to run away."

I found a black t-shirt that would probably be more forgiving of blood and dirt than the others. "And that's how you were caught?"

He nodded. "I stuck my head out the top to see what was going on because I could hear all this shouting, and I locked eyes with a dude in one of the copters. I knew it was game over, but I didn't know what— _whoa_!" He said, spinning around away from me as I took my t-shirt off. "I normally need to at least buy a girl dinner before I get to see that!"

I scoffed. "I'm wearing a sports bra," I told him. "I promise the view isn't that exciting."

Sam smirked. "Trust me, it's a really ugly bra," she promised him. I glared at her.

I'd pulled on the black t-shirt by the time he turned around again. He gave me a look. "You have some _really_ scary bruises on your stomach," he said. "And some pretty impressive scars."

"I thought you weren't looking," I said.

"Why do girls always choose boring bras?" he asked, not really to either of us. "If I was a girl I'd be wearing the hottest stuff I could find twenty-four seven."

"I hear you," Sam said, winking at him. "Not all girls choose—"

I interrupted her. "You were in the middle of telling us what happened," I said pointedly to Macca, and then glared at Sam again. She looked right back at me. I wanted to _throttle_ her, I swear. What was she _doing_?

"Oh, yeah," he said. "Anyway, there's not much else to say. Because of what happened to Old Johnson when he got arrested I didn't know what was going to happen to us, so I made Blanket hide. If I'd know it was just an ordinary Move On order, I would have kept her." He cringed. "I also wouldn't have punched the truck driver."

Through my haze of being upset with Sam, I was a little surprised it was just the police that had caused that devastation. I hadn't known police to behave like that. Then again, the Frosts were probably running the economy in the local area and the police needed to do what they were told to a certain extent. I supposed Diane _had_ told Sean to take care of 'those kids' when we were eavesdropping at the pub. If everyone was okay, they must have actually just wanted to get the trucks in. Diane and Sean were so hard to pinpoint, though. I kept expecting them to be truly evil, especially given the feelings I had around Diane and what had happened with Old Johnson and the Slave Stone. I just couldn't predict what they would do. I didn't know what I should or shouldn't be worried about with them.

"Better safe than sorry when it comes to the Frosts," I said eventually, putting aside all my personal issues to focus on the much bigger problem unfolding around us. "Where are the others?"

He winced, and jerked his thumb back in the police station. "Most of the protesters just got moved on," he said. "I think some of them are still in transit to Broome. I don't know if they're going to charge anyone, maybe they will. They just wanted to get them out the way quickly." He gestured at us to follow him. I slid the door closed on the car and locked it, leaving my backpack under the seat. Best not to bring enormous chunks of stolen diamond ore into a police station. "Jammas and Amanda are still in lock up," he said. "Those fucking assholes set bail at ten thousand for us. I get why they did it for me: I'm arrested all the time," he said. "But Jammas is just my mate and Amanda's only crime is being seen with us. Maybe the famous Lara Croft can talk the cops out of it."

"Worth a shot, I suppose," I said, and followed him up the ramp into the station. I needed to ask Amanda about all of the magic we'd seen, anyway. If I helped her out, maybe she'd help _me_ out.

The police officer on the counter looked up and rolled her eyes at him as he entered. I was heartened that she appeared to be Aboriginal. "Whatever you want, Matthew, the answer is no. Now please leave before you end up with an obstruction charge, too."

Macca didn't look too concerned. "It'll match my assault and affray charge," he said. "And what else did you charge me with? Oh, yeah… 'Littering'. Dude, I'm practically a life member of Greenpeace, that's not going to hold up in court."

"Save it for the magistrate," she said, looking back down the paperwork she was in the middle of completing. "And leave, or I'll issue you _another_ Move On."

"Uh, hello," I said, interrupting their argument as I walked up to the counter. "I'm here to see two people you have in custody?" At my accent, the police officer looked up again, and, fortunately, she clearly recognised me. She didn't say anything straight away, so I elaborated. "James and Amanda, I think you're holding them here. May I speak to them?"

She may have refused Macca, but when _I_ asked, she considered my request. I suppose she decided she didn't want to hear about herself on the six o'clock news in a story denouncing the Australian police. "You have five minutes," she said, and then pointed at Sam. "No cameras, you'll have to give that to me."

"Yeah, wouldn't want to catch the moment where you beat and brainwash helpless prisoners on camera," Macca said clearly. "And then hand them over to the mining companies."

I winced, glancing at Sam. We knew that wasn't what had happened to Old Johnson.

Fortunately for Macca, the police officer just gave him a tired stare. "Do I look like I'd be a fan of the mining companies?" she asked him. When he didn't answer, she said. "It's great that you're trying to get rid of them. Don't think I don't appreciate that. But next time when you get a permit for a hundred people, don't invite three hundred and be surprised when you get the police called on you."

Sam had been listening to the conversation, and didn't turn her camera off until the last minute. She popped out the memory card and gave the body over to the police officer.

The holding cells were clearly just in the next room, and the woman stood and unlocked the dividing door. When Macca looked like he was going to follow us, the officer stopped him. "Outside," she told him.

He shrugged. "See you guys soon," he said, following her orders and walking both him and Blanket out of the station.

She sighed audibly at him and let us through, standing at the door to supervise us.

Jammas and Amanda were in the same cell, but Jammas was sitting on the bed and Amanda had gone to sit on the floor at the very far end. As far away from him as she could get, it looked like.

When she saw us, she rolled her eyes. "Of course," she said, and then looked away.

It wasn't that I'd forgotten how difficult she was, but it was a stark reminder that she wasn't our friend. Sam was right, it was going to be difficult to get her to tell us anything that she knew about the magic we'd seen.

Jammas was far more pleased to see us, even though he was clearly extremely hungover. "Hey, girls!" he said. "Come for a conjugal visit?"

"Just _shut up_ ," Amanda murmured, looking exhausted.

"You wish," said Sam pleasantly to Jammas, ignoring Amanda. "Can't post bail?"

He shook his head. "Nah, my folks already did, but the police station in Sydney they gave it to still hasn't faxed the receipt. Should be any time now," he said, but then looked hesitantly back at Amanda. "They wouldn't do hers, though. I get it: ten 'k' is a lot for a stranger."

Amanda made a noise. "Good, I don't want to owe you anything anyway," she said.

"But how are you going to get out of here?" I asked her.

She looked back toward me through the rungs, her hand on her forehead and her knees to her chest. It struck me how small and delicate she looked. "Why do you care?" she said. "Just leave me alone."

"God, you want to be _a little ruder_ to us, maybe?" Sam mumbled behind me.

"Do you have anyone we can call for you?" I asked Amanda. "Family?"

"Not anymore," she spat at me, as if her misfortune was somehow my fault. "It doesn't matter. If I don't post bail they'll hear my case in a couple of days anyway. I'll be out of here then because they don't have anything to convict me of. Can you just go already?"

I suddenly had a thought about how I might convince Amanda to help us. It was a long shot, but probably a good place to start. "I'm not the awful person you think I am," I told her. "Really, I'm not, and I can prove it."

She snorted. "Yeah, sure you can," she said sarcastically.

When we made eye contact, I walked up to the bars. She looked a little alarmed and like she wanted to edge away from me.

"I can prove it," I repeated, holding two of the rungs and looking down at her. "Amanda, I'll post your bail."


	18. Chapter 18

Amanda didn't look angry at first, just genuinely surprised. "You'll _what?_ "

"I'll post your bail," I told her, and then twisted around to look at the police officer. "Ten thousand, wasn't it? Is card alright?"

Sam was just as surprised as Amanda was. "Wait a second," she said. "Lara, you won't pay extra for a shot of vanilla in your latte, but you'll _pay ten thousand to bail her out of custody?_ "

"Technically I'm not paying anything – as long as she shows up in court." The expression I gave Sam warned her not to protest. I was too upset with her to get into an argument over how I spent my money, anyway, because I'd never told her to stop buying ridiculously expensive clothes. It was _my_ money, and we needed Amanda's help.

"We can take your cash, debit cards, credit cards and bank cheques," the police officer confirmed. "We also accept sureties over assets if you don't have the funds handy."

By this point, Amanda had had the opportunity to fully appreciate what I was doing. She stood up against the rungs so when I turned back to her we were face to face. "I won't sign the bail form," she hissed at me. "I don't want your money!"

The police officer said clearly from behind me, "You can sign a surety form on her behalf if you wish, Ms. Croft."

I looked into Amanda's eyes. "If you could get that ready for me?" I said to the officer, and then to Amanda, "See? I'm not your enemy. I don't know why you think I am."

Despite the fact I was doing something very nice for her, Amanda looked like she was ready to kill me with her bare hands. "I won't show up at court," she threatened.

"Yes, you will," I said as pleasantly as I could manage. I meant it, though.

Jammas blew air through his lips. "I could go some popcorn, this is better than Foxtel Live," he said to Sam. "Want in? Who's your money on?"

Sam didn't even smile at him, let alone try to joke. "Lara, what the fuck _?_ Just like that you'll risk ten thousand on _her_?" I didn't answer her.

Amanda proceeded to pour petrol onto the fire. "I can see you discussed this thoroughly with everyone involved," she said sarcastically. "Perhaps you should listen to your girlfriend on this one."

"I've made my mind up," was my response. I didn't look at Sam. However, I did glance at Jammas to check to see if he'd picked up on Amanda's reference to Sam as my girlfriend; he hadn't.

He just looked a little uncomfortable, letting his unanswered comment hang in the air before saying, "Okay, not feeling at all sidelined here…"

With Amanda literally looking like she may have made an attempt on my life if there weren't bars between us, it was difficult to be nice to her. I managed the friendliest smile I could anyway, and then turned around and approached the police officer. "Can I do the paperwork now?"

The woman nodded. "If you two would like to come back to the counter we can finalise everything." She stood aside so I could walk back through the dividing door, and Sam followed me.

The police officer gave Sam her camera back as soon as the door was shut and Sam leant against the far wall, fiddling with it and refusing to make eye-contact with me.

The paperwork was relatively simple; it was just a two page document that needed my signature and credit card number at the end of it. I read all of it just in case, and then signed. She gave me a photocopy of it and then collected a few documents off the fax machine and went into the back office.

I sat down on one of the chairs next to the counter to wait. Sam was standing across from me, reviewing some footage. She didn't make any attempt to communicate with me at all. That _she_ was ignoring _me_ felt unfair, especially since I'd been putting up with her climbing all over Macca for the past two days.

"I want Amanda to trust me, Sam," I tried to explain. "Maybe if she sees that—"

" _Ten thousand dollars_ , Lara?" Sam interrupted me. "You're risking _ten thousand dollars_ for the slim possibility that girl will ever tell you anything? She _hates_ you."

"You're right," I snapped. "Maybe I should have bought a pair of shoes instead." When she didn't say anything, I added. "Why is it such a problem for you, anyway? You don't care about money."

"No," she said. "But you do."

"This is work, Sam, it's not like—"

"It's not like refusing to pay more than a thousand pounds a month on a place with your girlfriend when you're rolling in it? Your girlfriend who, by the way, doesn't hate you, but actually loves you?"

I just stared at her. "What are you talking about? I said I was happy to pay half!" I stood up. "And why are _you_ getting upset, anyway? _You're_ the one who's been climbing all over Macca for the past two days!"

She narrowed her eyes at me as if I'd said something truly offensive. "Don't even fucking go there, Lara," she said. "You don't want to start that discussion with me right now."

The door leading to the cells opened, and both Jammas and Amanda emerged, followed closely by the police officer who locked it behind them.

Sam looked from them and then to me and said pointedly, "I think I'll go hang out with Macca and Blanket," knowing full well how hurtful that would be. She then turned and marched out the door.

Jammas watched Sam leave, looked quizzically at me, and then decided not to comment when he saw my expression. He considered me for a moment and then threw his hands up to the ceiling. They nearly touched it. "I'm free!" he announced. He glanced over his shoulder at Amanda who was ignoring him.

"Psst," he said to her. "You're supposed to say, 'Good thing you're free, because nobody would pay for you'." He was speaking to her, but it seemed to be me he was trying to entertain. I quickly realised he was trying to distract me from my mood, and found it very sweet. Sweet, but misguided. How are you supposed to be distracted from the fact your girlfriend feels entitled to hit on other people?

Amanda rolled her eyes at him, but there was none of the animosity that she displayed towards me visible. She accepted her belongings from the police officer, not even acknowledging the person who had paid her bail was standing across from her. I hoped Sam wouldn't end up being right on this one, not only for my ten thousand dollars but also for the fact she wouldn't let me forget it.

As Amanda left the police station, she fished a cigarette packet out of her backpack and put one of them in her mouth. She'd found a lighter in one of the other pockets by the time the door closed behind her.

"Sigh," said Jammas, using the actual word. "Sharing a cell with the chick you're into has to be way up there on the list of awesome ways to spend a morning," he said. "But she _still_ won't come anywhere near me. Is it my hair?" I looked at his head: he was practically clean-shaven.

I smiled politely at his attempt to joke with me, but I didn't feel much like humour. I just felt sick.

He gave up on the jokes and put a hand on my shoulder. "We'll all get on the sauce tonight, you can count on it," he said. "And don't worry about your money. Amanda's all talk. She won't skip bail."

I looked up at him. He was giving her a good reference – why, I had no idea. I couldn't tell through all his playfulness if he was seriously interested in her or just after someone who he knew would be a challenge for him to sleep with. "Thanks," I said, anyway.

He nodded, grabbed his hoodie off the counter and went to leave. "Now, I don't smoke," he said, leaning his back against the door to push it open. "It ruins my clean outdoorsy image, you see. The chicks dig that. But I'm about to pretend I do so I have an excuse to bum one off her." He shot me a grin and barrelled out of the door after Amanda.

Without anyone left in the station, there was no reason for me to be in there other than the fact I was avoiding Sam. I could still feel the car keys in my pocket. Maybe I'd just go and sit in the car and wait for them. I didn't like leaving the Slave Stone by itself, anyway, and I needed to figure out what our next move was against Frost International. We just had to get Old Johnson back and figure out a way to stop the Frosts using the diamonds to control anyone else.

When I opened the door the first thing I saw was Sam and Macca, each holding one of Blanket's hands and feet, swinging her backwards and forwards while she shrieked with delight. They were laughing, too. It was such a domestic image and I wasn't prepared for how painful it was going to be. It was almost as bad as watching her batt those long lashes at him.

I turned away from it, feeling my stomach knot. Why was she doing this to me? Wasn't she supposed to love me?

Unfortunately, Macca saw me as I tried to sneak down the ramp. "Lara!" he said. "Sam told me what you did, you're a fucking champion!" He put Blanket down and apologised to her, beckoning me over.

Well, I couldn't very well just turn around and walk away, could I? I glanced at Sam; she was hanging back, looking sullen. While I was trying to decide what to do, Macca jogged over to me and hugged me so tightly my feet left the ground. He spun me around and then placed me back on the pavement where he'd lifted me from. "Thanks for bailing Amanda out," he said. "It will mean the world to Jammas, trust me. Fucking awesome of you. I didn't expect that."

When Blanket rushed over to us, Sam followed her. Macca said something else, but I was distracted by Sam approaching and the tightening knot in my stomach. "Pardon?" I asked him.

He laughed. "I said: what are we going to do about Frost? We can't just let those fuckers get away with whatever they had done to Old Johnson."

Blanket looked up at him. "What did they do?" she asked.

He shook his head. "I don't know, honey. But they were mean to him." While Blanket was thinking about that, I spoke.

"We've got a bigger problem," I said, wondering exactly how much I should tell him. I decided to keep it minimal at this stage. "I took something valuable of theirs and I'm very certain they're going to try and get it back." I looked down at Blanket. "We need to find somewhere safe for her."

Macca made a face. "I'm not sure there _is_ anywhere safe for her. Old Johnson introduced two of the other performers as family members, but I'm not sure what the really means, you know? Everyone's 'my mob'." He looked down at Blanket standing in the centre of the three of us. "There's a reason she was left by herself running around the camp even after the performers were gone, you know?" He didn't want to say what it was, and I understood why: it was hard to know how much she understood and he didn't want to hurt her feelings.

"I'm sure she'd be pretty safe with you," Sam said, clearly flattering him.

"I can come with you," Blanket agreed, taking Macca's hand and looking up at him. "We can look for Grandpa. Then you can come and see my house, I have a My Little Pony swimming pool."

Macca smiled at Blanket, but he didn't look too convinced by the idea. "I think I should come with you guys," he said to Sam and I. "Don't tell me you can't use some muscle."

Sam was _still_ going. "Depends on which muscle," she said, flashing him that cheeky smile of hers.

I opened my mouth, but I didn't even know where to start with her. Not only did it feel like she was doing it to deliberately hurt me, it was _so_ inappropriate to be overly flirtatious with him when we were talking about the welfare of a child. What had gotten into her?

Even Macca looked quite uncomfortable. "Um," he said, laughing nervously because he wasn't sure how to deal with her comment. "Anyway, I'm really reluctant to make a report to Child Protection because if they take her, Old Johnson might be charged with child endangerment for abandoning her and never get her back."

We all thought on it. I remembered Blanket's story from the drive to Derby. "Blanket mentioned some… uh, ' _ray_ talkers' here, I think she said. They were friends of Old Johnson's. It's a long shot, but maybe we could give them a try?"

Macca shrugged. "Beats any of my suggestions," he said. "Jammas will want to come with us and Amanda's due to go back to Sydney tomorrow morning if the weather holds." He looked up at the sky; there were more clouds than there had been earlier in the day. He didn't say anything further about that, though, he just kneeled down so he was face-to-face with Blanket. "Your friends, the _ray_ talkers, do you know where they live?"

"On the beach," Blanket said. "The one with the dolphins."

I ended up volunteering to go back into the police station and ask the police officer for more information about dolphin-related beaches in the area. Really, I just wanted to get away from Sam and Macca. I didn't know what Sam was doing and just being around her while she was flirting with him was unbearable. The police officer was sceptical that we'd actually see any dolphins in King Sound – she said she'd heard of them but they weren't very common – but suggested that the mangroves were our best bet and gave us some simple instructions about the shortest route there.

When Jammas and Amanda had finished their cigarette break, we all piled into the people-mover and Macca fussed about with his GPS. Sam sat up front with Macca and Blanket, and when I went to take the seat in the back next to Amanda, she stopped me.

"Really?" I asked her dryly. What was this, high school?

"Don't sit next to me," she said, and then slid over so I couldn't.

With everything that was going on, I was ready to _break_ something, I swear. I took a long, slow breath and then sat in one of the other seats. Jammas sat next to me and gave me a wide grin. He stank of smoke and it wasn't pleasant at all. "I'll sit next to you," he said. "So what's a ray talker, anyway? 'Ray' like stingray?"

Amanda answered him. "No," she said, "' _ray_ ' means 'spirit' in Banuba."

"I'm not going to be great company," I said apologetically to him. "I have a lot on my mind." Sam accidentally made eye-contact with me in the rear-vision mirror. I closed my eyes for a moment.

I'm not sure what Sam did when I had my eyes closed, but whatever it was worried Macca. "Hey," he said, putting a hand on her knee. It was a reasonably platonic gesture but I _hated_ it anyway. "Are you okay? You look kind of upset." Sam shook her head, indicating she didn't want talk. She didn't know I was looking, either, and she brushed his hand off her leg. I wonder what she would have done if she'd known I _was_ looking?

I sat back in my seat, listening to Jammas and Macca chatter light-heartedly as we headed out of the township.

The mangroves were a short drive out, and there was only one track that led out to the beach. At least, I assumed it lead to a beach; the waterline was concealed by thickly growing trees. We were only certain we'd come to the right place when Blanket squealed and ran off ahead of us into the mangroves. Macca took off after her. I put my backpack on, this time. I felt uncomfortable about always leave the Slave Stone unattended.

It wouldn't have been possible to walk directly on the mud, but makeshift planks had been hammered into the exposed roots making a path through the grove. I could smell smoke, but the spindly trees were too-closely growing for me to see where it was coming from. I could hear easy chatter and laugher somewhere ahead of us.

I didn't see who it was until the mangroves finished and I'd stepped off the last plank onto the muddy beach. Blanket was ahead of us and running up to a group of Aboriginal men sitting around a bonfire. Most of them were topless, but they were otherwise dressed in ordinary clothes and they all had beer-bottles. I was immediately certain we shouldn't be there.

Confirming my assessment, as soon as they saw us they all stopped talking and drinking and stared. One of the men stood up. "Hey!" he called. He didn't sound happy.

Blanket stopped in her tracks, her little bare feet sinking up to her ankles in the sand.

The man looked at her, and then at us. "What you doing with Old Johnson's girl?" he yelled at us, walking across half of the distance between Blanket and the fire. There was something very commanding about him.

Blanket took one look at his angry expression and then ran back to us, looking really upset. Macca picked her up. "We were hoping you could take care of her," Macca said. "Old Johnson had some trouble with the police and he's in not state of mind to take care of her."

The man kept walking toward us. Behind him, the other men were completely silent. It was unnerving. When he reached us, he sized us up one by one, not speaking for almost a minute. He had a very intense expression. "You shouldn't be here," he said to us at last. "This is men's business, here." He looked sharply at Sam. "I can see that camera." Sam looked properly chastised and turned it off on her belt.

Macca made another attempt. "Blanket hasn't got anyone," he said. "I know she's met you before and I thought—"

The man interrupted him. "We're not taking that girl," he said. "No girls here. Especially not her."

"Especially not her?" I repeated. "Why—"

He looked directly at me, and the vehemence in his expression made the words die on my lips. He took another mouthful of beer, thinking before he spoke again. "That's our business," he said eventually. He then looked at Amanda. "What's up with you, Blondie?" he asked. She didn't say anything, but she was trying not to make eye-contact with him. He walked around us to her. Reaching out with the hand his beer was in, he looked as if he was actually going to lift the side of her top with the nose of his bottle. She darted away from him, but didn't say anything.

He chuckled darkly. "You got some bad spirits, girl," the man told her. "Bad, bad spirits. Old Johnson can chase them away."

"I'm used to them," she said neutrally.

He then looked back at all of us. "Go on," he said, making a rough gesture toward us. "Scram. I don't know how Old Johnson convinced you to bring that girl here, but you tell that old bugger he's got to stop. We can't help her, and we can't _talk_ with her around." Something about the way he said 'talk' suggested to me he didn't mean simply speaking.

They couldn't help her? I stared at him for a moment, before I felt Jammas pulling on my arm. Everyone else was going to leave. The man had spent some time watching me and was giving me a really strange expression as if there was something about me he just couldn't figure out.

He looked me up and down, but he didn't say anything else. He just turned around and walked back towards the fire.

Blanket hadn't mentioned anything about them being angry at her in her story. Was it us he was angry at? Or Old Johnson?

While we climbed back into the car, I caught myself furtively watching Sam. She noticed and gazed back at me for a moment before her face scrunched up as if she were about to cry. She didn't, though, she just turned away and got into the car.

When we were all seated and Macca was turning the car around, I said, "I suppose that wasn't such a good idea after all."

Macca wasn't looking at all pleased. "They just seemed really cold," he said. "Who refuses to look after a little kid for their mate?"

"They didn't sound like they were his friends," I observed. "Maybe something happened."

Blanket was on Sam's lap, playing with her camera and chatting to her about it. I wondered what Blanket's story was.

There was nothing really else to do except drive back into Derby. We stopped at an empty playground to consider what to do next, gathering around a picnic table. Unlike the sandy road two streets up, the playground had lush grass that looked like it could use a mow. I couldn't believe the rainfall in the township was different than that two streets out of it, but I wondered why someone would water the grass and not cut it. I stared down at the grass, trying to not to look at Sam.

This time, Jammas said he'd take care of Blanket while we figured out how to proceed. Sam hung back, pretending to me immersed in operating the camera. In reality it had never stopped her from interacting with anyone unless she wanted it to.

"You don't want to be involved?" I asked Jammas as he accepted Blanket from Macca.

He shrugged, grinning across at his friend. "Nah, I just follow this big guy around," he said. "Someone has to. Got to at least _try_ and keep him out of trouble." Macca put a hand on Jammas' head and pushed it roughly in mock disapproval, but he was smiling as he watched Jammas carry Blanket over to the swings.

I looked across at Sam. She was watching them, too, but she wasn't smiling like Macca was. She still looked withdrawn, and it was odd to see her like that. I wanted to be worried, but I was just so upset with her. Some bitter part of me hoped it was guilt she was suffering from.

Amanda made a disgusted noise at the boys' display of companionship and retrieved her cigarette packet again. "I'm going to for a walk. I don't care what you come up with," she said, wandering off.

Macca watched her leave and then turned back to us. "So what do we do?" he said. "Should we just sneak in there after sunset and try and convince Old Johnson to come back with us? We can sabotage some of the machinery while we're there as well."

"I don't think he's going to need much convincing," I said cryptically to Macca. "But you might need to carry him."

Macca looked alarmed. "He's that badly hurt?"

I winced. "It's hard to say," I said. I thought about what I really wanted to do at the mine. "And I don't want to just cut a few electrical cords and slash some tyres. I want to shut that mine down for good."

Macca raised his eyebrows. "Well, sign me up," he said. "But we'll probably get jailed if we cause too much damage."

I shrugged. "If they catch us."

He gave me the same admiring look he'd given Sam when she'd handed him the radio on site. "You're awesome," he said, "You make it sound like such a piece of cake." He was about to continue the gush of praise when Sam interrupted him. She'd been silently standing beside us with the camera, and it was a surprise to hear her speak.

"Lara," she said harshly, "don't you have something to tell Macca?"

I double-took. "Don't _I_ have something…" I repeated, taken aback. I closed my mouth again and swallowed. Talk about bloody hypocrisy. "I think _you_ have something to tell him, don't you?"

Macca had shrunk a little away from us, looking a combination of surprised and really uncomfortable.

Sam was breathing heavily as she took a step toward me. Her eyebrows were low over her eyes. "The problem is that I don't know what I _can_ tell him, Lara. You didn't exactly give me a list of people who are allowed to know."

"It's _not_ a secret, Sam!"

Macca put his hands up in a 'yield' gesture. "You know, I don't want to know whatever it is," he said. "I think I'd rather go play on the swings with Blanket." He couldn't get away from us fast enough.

I glared at Sam. "Do you think that was fair, Sam? It's not his fault he—"

"Doesn't fucking know that we're together because no matter what I do you don't seem to want to tell him?" she interrupted me again. "I'm sick of fucking waiting, Lara. Are we in the closet or aren't we? You say it's not a secret but then you don't tell anyone!"

"I told Bree and Min!"

"Because _they asked!"_ she said.

My heart was pounding. "And I told them, didn't I? We've been through this! I don't want _that question_ to be what every interviewer asks when I—"

"Why the hell are you so fucking terrified of answering that question anyway?" she said. "It's not that hard, Lara. Repeat after me, 'I-don't-want-to-talk-about-my-private-life'…" She enunciated in such a way that it could _not_ have been more patronising.

God, she was just being so unfair. Everything about this topic was just so bloody easy for her, she just had no concept of what it was like to be in my shoes. "That's just it Sam, I don't! I don't want to talk about it! That's our business, not anyone else's! Why are you trying to force me to be public about this?"

Sam dropped her arms by her side. "Make your mind up, Lara. You don't want to tell anyone in case the media finds out, but apparently that we're together isn't a secret. Not telling people sounds like a fucking secret to me!"

I was so angry with her I was shaking. Equal parts of me wanted to throttle her or just turn and run away. "So, what, you've been hitting on Macca to try and force me to tell him that we're together? Sam, that's not fair to—"

She looked as if she was about to cry. "You know what's not fair?" she said, "We were, like, _this_ close to being completely out after that photo my auntie took and gave to Dad's studio, and we weren't even together then. But now you've pushed us right back in. I want to tell people how much I love you and how happy I am, but I have to keep my mouth shut because _you don't_." She pointed towards Jammas and Macca. "Lara, we're so fucking deep in the closet they think we're both single!"

I tried to join the dots of what she was saying, and I didn't like the picture I was beginning to see. "So where does this lead?" I asked her, feeling terribly sick I knew the answer. "You'll break up with me if I don't agree to snog you in Trafalgar Square when you decide you want to?"

Her eyes were swimming, and she let the tears spill down her cheeks. She didn't answer me directly. "What hurts the most is that obviously some part of you is ashamed to be with me," she said. "Because if you really loved me as much as I love you, you wouldn't even care about what anyone else thinks. You'd just want to shout it to the world—"

"Sam, _you're_ the one that never cares what anyone thinks!" My voice was cracking. "I'm not _you_! I'm me! I don't feel like I _need_ to tell everyone anything! I don't _want_ to discuss anything about my private life with anyone except you!"

She was hardly even listening to me. "You know what the worst thing is?" she asked me rhetorically, sounding resigned. "That when I was hitting on him and you got all angry about it, it's the only time you really show any sign at all that we're together. Jealousy is the only public display of anything I can get out of you. Healthy, huh?"

I was dangerously close to tears myself. "Why are you doing this?"

She pointed at Macca and Jammas again. "If it's not a secret, go and tell them. Right now."

I looked across at the boys. Jammas was pushing Blanket, and Macca was in the swing beside her. He was trying to look as if he wasn't watching us, but I could tell he was. I didn't think they would be able to hear us from all the way over the other side of the playground, though.

"What are you waiting for, Lara?"

I looked back at her, my jaw set. "So that's your solution, is it? To force me to do something I feel uncomfortable with when you decide I should do it?"

"You said yourself it wasn't a secret. I'm showing you that you're fucking kidding yourself." When it was clear I wasn't going to go, she exhaled, closing her eyes for a moment. "I knew you wouldn't," she said as if I had somehow betrayed her and she was very disappointed.

 _That_ got my blood rising. "If you knew I wouldn't, then why did you put me through all of that?" I demanded. I was shouting, and I felt like I was dangerously close to snapping and breaking something. "For the past two days I've watched you all over Macca, all over him! You act like you're not doing anything wrong, but do you know how it feels to watch the person you're completely in love with hitting on someone else?" I paused a moment, as if I were waiting for her to answer. "Do you, Sam?" She was just staring at me. I don't think she'd expected me to outright shout at her; I don't know if I ever had. "Every time you batted those pretty lashes, touched him oh-so-innocently or said something flirty I was asking myself, 'Does Sam still love me?', 'Is she going to leave me for him?'."

I'd mostly silenced her, but she managed to begin, "I wouldn't cheat—"

"Yes, you keep saying that," I interrupted her. "And I want to trust you. But you've cheated on basically everyone else you've been with and you were two steps away from having your tongue down Macca's throat. 'Which muscle', Sam? _Really_? You want to just take off all your clothes now and jump on top of him? Are you going to do that in front of me, too? Maybe if I actually see you shagging him _then_ I'll tell him, right? That's your logic?"

She just stared at me. This time, she didn't try and justify herself.

"I don't care what your excuse is, Sam! You've always known how private I am about stuff like this. You can't 'fix' that by deliberately hurting me and you're mad if you think you can."

More tears rolled down her cheers. "I just don't feel like you're actually in love with me," she said, but then stopped herself. "You know what? I need to think." With that, she turned around and headed back to the car.

I watched her leave, my stomach dropping. What did that mean, 'I need to think'? It sounded ominous, I couldn't bear to think of what it might imply. All of it, I just… I couldn't even wrap my head around what had happened. Sam knew me better than anyone else in the world. At times, even better than Roth had. She of all people have should known how private I was. Why did she think that was suddenly going to change just because I was in a relationship with her?

But I haven't told Macca, I thought. She's right about that. I haven't told him or Jammas and I don't want to. Why didn't I want to? Was it _really_ because I thought Sam should be the one to tell him since he was hitting on her? She and Macca were really no closer than I was to him. God, I just had no idea. This was all such a mess, I had no idea what I thought.

I couldn't just stand here staring at the car in the car park, though. I looked around the area; there was a crop of those oddly bulbous trees over the far side of the playground. It seemed like a better place to be than standing awkwardly at the picnic table, so I jogged over into them. The grass around the trunk was probably full of all the snakes that Sam kept talking about, but I didn't care. Just thinking about the documentaries we watched together and how I enjoyed listening to her chatting about them _hurt._

I slung off my backpack and sat down against the base of one of the swollen trees. With my knees under my chin, I realised even the trousers I was wearing had been bought by her. There was no part of my life in which she wasn't completely present. How could she possibly think that I didn't love her with all my heart, just because I didn't want to write it on the skyline?

I picked a blade of grass and curled it around one of my fingers, staring at it. The t-shirt I'd chosen had a tag that was making me itch, and I just let it irritate me.

That last thing she said about not knowing I loved her was burnt into my mind. I supposed it didn't even matter what I felt for her if I couldn't show it. No wonder she had no idea how much I loved her, I hardly ever said anything and it wasn't as if we were walking around holding hands. Why couldn't just saying it be enough, though? Why did she need so much proof all the time?

Maybe this is all my fault, I thought. Maybe somehow it is, even though what she did to me with Macca was really hurtful and horribly unfair. I already knew I was rubbish at showing her how much I loved her. Maybe if I wasn't, she wouldn't even care that I didn't really want to tell anyone.

I took my mobile out of my backpack and switched it on. Perhaps I should text her and tell her I'm sorry I'm a horrible girlfriend, I thought. Maybe that would help. I was conflicted, though, because I was still so angry with her for using Macca to deliberately upset me. And why did I have to be the one to make changes to myself, anyway? Why couldn't Sam come some way toward me and recognise that I was never going to be as public as she wanted me to be and just accept that?

While I was arguing with myself, my phone chimed to let me know I had a message. I clicked on it automatically.

It was a picture message from Min; she and Bree had taken a selfie from the balcony of the apartment on the Gold Coast, holding wine glasses and apparently toasting us. " _Thx for letting us stay here – we had a great time xx,_ " the message read. Both of them were smiling; Bree looked as if she'd just finished laughing.

I could hardly breathe, and I felt hot tears on my cheeks. I just wanted Sam and I to be happy. I wanted us to be as happy as Bree and Min were. Why was that so hard?

I was crying too much to message Sam, so I put the phone back in my bag. Somehow I was going to have to pull myself together so that we could do whatever we needed to do to stop Frost International. I couldn't think of anything else except Sam, though. How was I going to work with her when I either wanted to kill her or sob uncontrollably when I so much as thought about her?

I heard the sound of feet walking through the grass before I saw who it was. I thought for a second it might be Sam and my heart raced. I hurriedly tried to dry my eyes but I must still have looked like an absolute mess.

When I looked up, I found myself locking eyes with Amanda, instead. Her cigarette burnt in between her fingers.

She'd stopped, surprised. She obviously hadn't seen me earlier because I was sitting at the base of a very swollen tree and trying to cry as quietly as possible. Now that we were staring at each other, she couldn't pretend she hadn't seen me, either. She looked like she wasn't sure what to do.

"Just make whatever judgment you want to make and then leave me alone," I told her bitterly.

"You sound like me," she observed. She still looked very surprised, much more than I would have expected for the situation she'd found me in. I also thought that was the first time she'd spoken to me without any trace of hatred in her voice. She took another puff of her cigarette and blew the smoke out of the corner of her mouth. She was still looking at me.

"What do you want?" I asked her, probably quiet impatiently.

She considered me for several seconds before she spoke. "You're not at all like I thought you'd be."

"Yeah," I said tragically, retrieving a tissue from the front pocket of my bag so I could blow my nose. "I bet you never thought you'd see _the Lara Croft_ sobbing her eyes out underneath a really ugly tree."

"I didn't," she said, and then added as if it explained her confusion, "You've killed so many people like it doesn't even matter."

I shrugged. "I don't _enjoy_ killing people, you know. Actually, it still makes me a bit sick." I thought about the sound of that guard's skull cracking on the bannister at the mine and winced even at the thought.

That comment must have been the right one. Instead of snapping at me or insulting me as she had for the past several days, she held out her cigarette packet to me. "Want one?" I shook my head, even though I was tempted to accept purely because of the warmth of the gesture. "Pity," she said. "There's something really cathartic about causing damage to yourself when you're miserable." She inhaled deeply from her lit cigarette to prove her point.

You're miserable, I thought? You can't possibly be as miserable as _I_ am right now. That reminded me of Sam, and then I needed to blink back a whole surge of fresh tears.

She didn't ask me what was upsetting me, though. I was grateful. "So what's in the bag?"

I glanced at the backpack. There was nothing especially obvious about it – not visually. I could _feel_ something about it, though. I hadn't felt it during the day, and I hadn't really noticed it was back again until that very moment. "You can feel it, too?"

She gave me a look. "This is what I do," she said. "It's a Slave Stone, isn't it?"

 _That_ made me pay attention to her. "How did you know?"

She laughed once. "You don't want me to show you." I did, actually, but I didn't push it. She nodded her head at the bag. "Did you make it?"

I shook my head. "I took it off the Frosts."

She smiled faintly. "I _knew_ they were up to something," she said. "Do you know if they have more?"

I shook my head. "I don't know, but I didn't hear them mentioning any others." I looked down at my bag. It was lying very innocently on the grass beside me. "Do you know how to destroy it?"

"Why would you want to destroy— _what_?" She interrupted herself, staring at me with wide-eyed panic.

"What?" I said, sitting up straight. My first thought was those huge and venomous spiders that Sam was always telling me about. I looked down at myself to try and figure out what she was looking at.

She took my upper arm and pulled me upright with far more strength than a girl her weight should have been able to, even if she was quite a lot taller than I was. She leaned over me and pulled the neck of my t-shirt aside, peering down it. "No, no, no…" she was mumbling to herself.

"Is it a spider?" I asked her, afraid to move. "It's dangerous, isn't it?"

She glanced at me, distracted. "A spider?" she didn't answer though. Instead, she walked around the back of me and pulled my shirt up. If anyone else had done it at any other time, I would have decked them. However, with something dangerous on me, I couldn't get my top up fast enough.

She left my t-shirt around my shoulders, taking a few steps back and staring at me. She'd obviously found whatever it was. I looked over my shoulder at her. She was shaking her head. "But I didn't _touch_ you!" she was saying in disbelief. "I didn't even come anywhere _near_ you!"

I just stared at her. "Amanda…?"

She looked from my back to my face, glancing down at my bag. She then took my shoulders and turned me to face away from it. I felt tickling, as if an insect were crawling across my skin to my stomach. I looked down, terrified I was about to see an enormous hairy spider.

Something fluttered around my hip to perch on my scar. For a moment or two I just stared at the concentric circles etched into my skin, jaw open, unable to believe what I was seeing.

It was the bird-painting I'd touched on the cave wall.


	19. Chapter 19

After Amanda had had the opportunity to closely scrutinise the bird on my stomach, she looked angry again. "Wait a minute," she said. "That's not one of mine…." She looked at me sharply. "You idiot, you _touched_ it!" she accused me while I stared down my front. "I told you not to!"

I could hardly focus on what she was saying. I had a _painting_ looking curiously up at me from my stomach. I reached out a couple of fingers and brushed them over the design to see what it felt like; it was just like my skin but ever so slightly embossed with the concentric circles. I'd felt Alex's tattoo when he'd first got it, and my first impression was that it was similar to that.

"Are you even listening to me?" Amanda asked, spinning me around to face her with a hand on my shoulder. I could feel the bird flying around behind my back.

"I'm sorry," I said, perhaps a little sarcastically and once I'd closed my jaw. "I have a _painting_ flying around my skin. I was a bit distracted."

She made a frustrated noise and then released me. Walking a small distance away from me, she was deep in thought for a moment. She actually seemed really worried. "You don't even really know what you've done," she said, turning back to me. "Do you have any idea what sort of being you've just invited into your life?"

I wasn't really sure why she'd care what I invited into my own life, especially since she'd treated me with contempt basically since we crashed into her in Wollemi. She was being far too pessimistic, anyway. My gut feelings about magic so far hadn't led me astray, and the only real experience I had of the bird was when it coaxed Sam and I under the four wheel drive, saving us from the search helicopter. "Well, it helped me evade being recaptured by Frost earlier, so I can't imagine it's all that bad."

She thought about that for a second, but didn't say anything else. She just stared at me as if she was considering what she should do. It was at that point that I noticed her long sleeves and the high collar of her top. It was suddenly perfectly clear to me what she was hiding. " _You_ have one, too!" I said to her. "Was that the bad spirit that the _ray_ talker was asking about?"

At first I thought she might refuse to tell me anything. It would have been a pointless exercise, though, because it was obvious I already knew the answer. She quickly realised that. "I actually have fourteen," she said. "Some give me more trouble than others. One in particular."

I may have been staring at her torso. "Can I see?"

She gave me a very odd look. "No," she said very firmly. "And can you pull your shirt down already?"

I looked down by body; my t-shirt was still bunched above my breasts, so I did as she requested. I found it a bit of a double-standard that she had seen _my_ painting but I wasn't allowed to see hers, but I didn't push it. She was a well of useful information and I didn't want to get her offside again after just managing to break through the animosity.

"I'm saying this for your own benefit so actually listen to me," Amanda told me, not sounding very much as if she cared about my welfare. "Don't touch any more of them, and don't let anyone else touch that one. Unless you know what you're doing you can end up with any random spirit attached to you."

I nodded mutely. For a moment I worried about how I was going to make sure Sam didn't touch it, but then I remembered the huge fight Sam and I had just had and my heart sank. It was almost a reflex to want to show her anything that interested me as soon as I learnt about it, but I didn't even know if she'd be ready to talk to me. Maybe I wouldn't need to worry so much about her touching it at all.

I must have looked quite sad, because Amanda made a face. "If you're going to cry again I'm going somewhere else," she said, and went to take a puff off her cigarette. It didn't work though, so she held it up in front of her. The wind was picking up and it had blown out. She looked about us. "Goddamn weather in this country," she said. "Guess I need to find somewhere sheltered."

Of course, she could just _not_ smoke, I thought. I didn't say it. "Amanda," I said, stopping her as she went to leave. I had so many more questions about the painting, but I probably had to be selective in which ones I asked her because I felt as though she had the potential to get tired of helping me quite quickly.

She turned around, looking annoyed and confirming I probably had a very limited amount I could get away with asking her.

"Does having this bird painting-spirit thing on me mean I can do magic like you can?"

Amanda sighed at me. "I don't know anything about your bird spirit," she said. "So how should I know what powers it gives you?"

That sounded like a 'yes' to me. I thought about Old Johnson and Blanket. Despite everything with Sam, a hopeful smile rose to my lips. "Maybe I can help Old Johnson now, then," I said aloud. "If I can figure out how to use whatever powers I might have. Do you know how the stone works?"

Amanda watched me, eyes narrowed. She didn't answer me at first. "You find out you can use magic, and _that's_ the first thing you want to try and do with it?"

"Of course," I said, looking blankly at her.

She gave me a measured look. "You are _not_ at all like I heard," she said. "And no, I don't know how to help that man. I'm not even sure it's possible to reverse the effects of a Slave Stone." She turned and walked back through the trees. I wondered who she'd heard about me from as she left. Prof Chamberlain wouldn't have said anything bad about me, I was sure of it.

I looked back down at my bag. I wanted to tell the others I might be able to help Old Johnson now, but I wasn't really sure exactly how I'd introduce the whole idea of magic to Macca and Jammas. The Endurance crew hadn't been that keen on the idea and I still wasn't sure if Reyes _really_ believed what happened or had found some way to rationalise it to herself. Neither of the boys seemed to be like Reyes, though. Both of them reminded me of Alex a little, and he'd been open to the idea.

And I wanted to show Sam, but… I winced. Sam. I could imagine her crying somewhere and just that mental image broke my heart because I knew if she was, I'd caused it. I wish she'd just _talked_ to me, though, instead of hitting on Macca. Then again, we had talked about my issues in Sydney and I hadn't exactly made any progress on them. I exhaled. She shouldn't have done it anyway, though.

I touched the spot on my back where I could feel the bird was, imagining her reaction to seeing it.

I took a deep breath and mentally shook myself as I picked up my bag. You can do this, I thought as I walked out of the crop of trees. Just walk over to Macca and act as if nothing has happened. He won't want to talk about the fight anyway, especially not after you show him what you have on your back.

Macca and Jammas were still playing on the swings; it was another one of those hilarious scenes that made me smile. Macca had Blanket on his lap and was swinging backward and forwards while she was shouting at him to go higher. Jammas was standing on the other swing, looking as if he was attempting a trick he had probably mastered during childhood. He wasn't doing that well at it, though. Two grown men playing on a swing set; I almost had to laugh.

As I approached them, they glanced at each other. Neither of them said what they were thinking, though. Jammas had just managed to get one leg over his head so he was upside down halfway up the swing. He couldn't get any further, though, because he was too long to flip over. "Hang on, hang on," he said, clearly to me. "I'm about to do something really impressive."

"So I see," I said. I was smiling.

Seeing my smile, Macca brightened. "Any bright ideas on how to stop Frost?" he asked me, as if that was clearly what I had gone away to think about. He dragged his feet in the wood chips to stop the swing. "Just a second, okay?" he told Blanket.

"I was actually coming over to ask you if _you_ had any," I said. "And to show you something I found on myself."

He squinted. "Found on yourself? Like an insect bite or something?"

"Not exactly," I said, and peered down the front of my t-shirt. I couldn't see the bird there, though, so I put my bag on the ground and tried Amanda's trick of using the stone to make it move around to my stomach. The stone didn't seem to be working again, though, and even though I'd felt the bird just a few moments before I didn't know where it had gone.

Macca and Jammas were both watching me neutrally. Blanket was, too. "What are you doing?" she asked me sceptically. Both Macca and Jammas laughed at her tone of voice.

I looked up at them, frowning. "I found something interesting on myself," I said. "But it rather hard to explain what it is without showing you."

Jammas snorted. "You can show us," he said. "I'm sure whatever you have under that t-shirt is very interesting."

Macca smacked him in the shoulder. "Keep it in your pants, bro," he said amicably. "Is one chick not enough for you?"

Jammas shrugged. "Gotta get to one first." He looked back at me. "Just tell us what it is?"

I shook my head. Maybe it was still around the back, in a really weird position? I turned away from them and pulled my t-shirt up to my shoulders again. "Can you see anything at all?" Facing away from them, I spotted Amanda seated at the picnic table, cradling her cigarette so the wind wouldn't blow it out. She caught me watching her and rolled her eyes, standing up and approaching us.

Behind her, in the car, I could see Sam. My chest tightened.

Amanda reached me before I had a chance to think too much about Sam. "What are you doing?" she asked me irritably.

"I'm trying to show them the bird." I looked over my shoulder at them.

"A bird," Macca repeated flatly. "In your t-shirt." He paused, looking me up and down. "That's a pretty tight top, I think we'd already know if there was a bird in there."

"I want to see the bird!" Blanket told me. Macca patted her head.

Amanda tried to pull my t-shirt down. "What the hell are you doing? You can't tell _people like this_ about it, they'll never get it!"

I wrestled with her to keep it around my ribcage. "That's a bit mean," I said. "How do we know if they're going to 'get it' unless we try and tell them?"

Macca's eyes couldn't have been any narrower. "Is there some big female conspiracy going on where no one is telling the men anything?" he said. "Because I'm hearing a lot of 'don't tell him!', 'don't tell him!'s today."

Amanda looked past me at him and then sighed. "You're an idiot," she told me. She gestured at them with a hand and then crossed her arms. "Fine, be my guest. Just don't say I didn't warn you if they freak out." She stood back to watched me boredly.

Well then, I thought, I _will_ show them. I turned back to Macca and Jammas, and spent a short period of time searching all through my clothing for it while they watched, completely confused. When I couldn't find it, Amanda made a growling noise at the back of her throat and lifted my bag from the ground, holding it near parts of my body as if to flush the bird out of hiding.

Nothing happened.

 _That_ made her pay closer attention. She looked up at me, and then at the bag. She considered it for a moment. "The stone's not in there," she accused me, as if I was tricking her. She unzipped my bag.

"Hey!" I said, making an attempt on it, but she turned away using her back to block me as she stuck her hand inside it. She'd taken the box out before I managed to get a grip on one of the shoulder straps.

Opening the box, she stared at the Slave Stone and then, frowning, took it out with her bare hands. Nothing happened. "This is a fake," she said, and then turned back to me. "How did you change it so quickly?"

I shook my head. "It's the same one as before."

Macca and Jammas could not have looked more lost. Jammas said to Macca, "Dude, if you have any idea what's going on here, I could use your notes." Macca just shook his head.

"Can we keep swinging?" Blanket asked Macca.

"In a second," he said vaguely, still intently watching us.

Amanda frowned for a second, as if she were focusing on something. Then she looked alarmed and peered down her shirt. I was standing close to her, so when she pulled the neck of her shirt away from her skin, I leaned a little forward so I could look down it, too. Maybe I could get a peek at _her_ paintings. I couldn't see them, though, just milky white skin and the curve of her breasts over her bra.

" _Hey!"_ That was Sam's voice, and then someone pushed me roughly in the shoulder so I staggered away from Amanda. Sam stepped between the two of us, looking every bit as angry as she had when she'd confronted me in front of Macca. Her eyes were puffy though; she'd been crying. A lot, by the look of it. "What the _fuck_ are you doing, Lara?" she demanded, her voice raw. "Are you trying to punish me now?"

" _No!_ " I took a breath. "Actually, I—"

"—First your t-shirt goes up… god knows what you wanted to show the boys? Maybe your rippling abs or something?" I didn't actually _have_ rippling abs, so that seemed like a moot point. "And now you're looking down Amanda's top, too? Why don't just start making out with everyone in front of me? Give me a taste of my own medicine, hey?"

My heart was pounding again, and the adrenaline made my legs shake. "Sam, punishing people is _your_ trick, not mine."

I didn't realise how loudly Sam was shouting until I heard Blanket sounding upset. "Why are they angry?" she asked Macca. He tried to comfort her by hugging her, but she broke free of him and went running back to the car.

Macca dismissed his complete confusion and looked sternly at us. It was the first time I'd seem him look anything of the sort. "Nice work, girls," he said, and stood to follow her.

As I watched him go after Blanket, I heard Amanda _shriek_ at the top of her lungs _._ That made _everyone_ stop what they were doing and look at her. Even Macca turned around. Blanket reached the car all the way over the other side of the park and leant against it, looking miserable.

Amanda had dropped the Slave Stone into the grass in the nick of time it looked like. It was lying there, radiating the same awful power it had when Sean had nearly caught us. Why was it working again?

We all stared at it. It was just so _pretty_ in the dappled sunlight; all sorts of beautiful pastel colours were infusing through it. I felt that if I picked up and turned it in my hands it might fill my hands with tiny rainbows.

Macca open his mouth to say something, and then squinted and appeared to change what he was going to say. "What _is_ that?" he said. "Can I…?" He made as if he were going to pick it up.

"No!" I shouted, and held him back from it. "Amanda, can you put it away?" By the time I was finishing the sentence, though, she had already scooped it up with the box and shoved it hurriedly back into the unzipped bag in my hands. "I told you it wasn't fake," I said.

"But how…" She was shaking her head.

I was actually asking myself the same question. It worked, then it didn't, then it worked, then it didn't… what were we missing here? What was different about now than before? What was activating it?

"Oh, my God!" Sam said, and when I looked at her, her eyes were fixed on my stomach. All traces of her anger were gone. I looked down; the bird was there again. The boys were looking as well, prompted by Sam.

"What the fuck…" Macca began, taking few steps toward me as if he couldn't believe what he was seeing. "It's _moving_."

"That's what I was trying to show you before," I said. "I think I can use it somehow to save Old Johnson."

Jammas looked between Macca and me, and then put his hands up beside the chains of the swing. "I think I just stepped into the twilight zone," he said. "What the fuck, guys?" He pointed at my stomach. "What the fuck is that!"

Amanda gave me a pointed look. "Told you they'd freak out."

Macca still had that look of deep concern. "Hold on. Blanket," he said and then held a finger up at me. "Don't move." He jogged over to the car to collect her.

"That's so cool," Sam said, actually sounding just as fascinated by it as I'd imagined she would be. She looked up at me, and I knew that she wanted to touch it. As our eyes locked, but neither of us said anything.

I must have been staring at her, though, because Amanda exhaled impatiently. "You guys are stressing me out," she said.

Jammas gave Amanda an odd look. " _You_ guys are stressing _us_ out," he echoed, obviously speaking on behalf of Macca and himself. He stepped down off the swing. "There's something not right about that… wait, what?"

I looked at him and saw him staring at my stomach. I looked down; the bird was gone. I hadn't felt it move, either.

"I think you should apologize to Blanket for yelling," Macca said, approaching us with Blanket on one hip. She was wiping her eyes on her wrist. "Do you think that's a good idea, Blanket?" She nodded miserably.

I apologised to her. Sam did too, but she was looking directly at me as she said it. _That_ almost made _my_ eyes swim. I may have not been able to stop them, either, except I suddenly realised I couldn't feel the Slave Stone again. The only thing that was different from a minute ago, and then a minute before that was…

…Blanket.

I turned my head and stared at her. It _couldn't_ be, could it?

All the pieces fit began to slot into place in my head: the stone hadn't worked when she'd been with us at the mine, but had worked when she wasn't. The paintings were gone in her presence and visible when she wasn't near us. I hadn't even felt like murdering Diane when she was present. 'We can't _talk_ with her around', the _ray_ talker had said. Now she was with us, the paintings and the Slave Stone were quiet again.

 _Blanket_ was the variable, she had to be. There wasn't anything else.

I interrupted someone, I'm not sure who. "Blanket!" I said to no one in particular. " _Blanket's_ the reason why the stone won't work and why our paintings are gone!"

Everyone looked at me, and then at Blanket. Macca and Jammas had that glazed expression again.

Blanket looked confused, as well. "I didn't do anything," she said forlornly, and then wrapped her arms around Macca's neck. He just stroked her, gaping at us.

"Her?" Sam asked in the top register of her voice. "But how can she do magic? She's just a kid!"

Amanda took a quick peek down her own top and then closed her jaw. "I've read about objects being enchanted and used as dampeners," she said. "But I've never heard of a _person_ being used as one." She looked over at Macca and Blanket. "She's not just a dampener, though. She's a complete dead zone."

With everyone staring at her, Blanket started to cry again.

Macca looked at a loss as to what to do. Clearly he had _no_ idea what was going on, but since it was obviously important he obviously didn't want to tell us to be quiet. "This is over my head," he admitted, still rubbing her back. "I keep thinking that a camera crew is going to jump out of somewhere and tell me I've been Punk'd." He looked at Sam, "Is that going to happen?"

She shook her head, making eye contact with me again. I looked back at her. It was so painful to be this close to her and not on speaking terms.

Amanda walked up to Blanket as if she were examining an artefact instead of a little girl. "The Frosts obviously don't know about her," she realised aloud. "This could come in handy."

I looked away from Sam. "Handy? She's a little girl! She's not going anywhere near the Frosts!"

Amanda's expression was unreadable. "Plenty of people wouldn't have your scruples," she said neutrally.

"Well, I do have them," I said defiantly, in case she was considering doing anything with Blanket. "As long as I have anything to do with it, Blanket is staying somewhere safe and as far away from that mine as possible."

Amanda watched me, taking a deep breath and considering what I said. "You're right," she said eventually, sounding resigned. "I'll stay with her, anyway. I'm the best person to protect her if something happens."

Sam was looking sceptically at Amanda. "Your only defence is magic, though, and it doesn't work around her."

Jammas looked surprised. "You can do _magic?_ " he asked her. He sounded a mixed of shocked and horribly impressed. "Do you have things like that bird on your skin, too?"

She ignored him and said to Sam, "I'm not as helpless as you think I am," she said. When Sam looked as if she might query her, Amanda added, "And no, I'm not elaborating on that."

Macca was still shaking his head. He then laughed for a couple of moments; it seemed quite out of place. " _Magic_ ," he said. "You know, I've hung around a lot of pretty spiritual people, especially at protests. Plenty of people who reckoned they could do magic or were psychic." He looked between Amanda and I. "You two are _the last_ people on the planet I would have expected to be able to actually do it." He looked at Sam. "Can you do magic, as well?"

She held her hands up. "I just hold the camera!" she said. I made a face. She did far more than that.

Macca looked forwarded and blinked, shaking his head as if he expected to be able to snap out of something. "This might come as a bit of a TMI, but when you guys were fighting before you stormed off, I was pretty sure it was because you were both into me," he said. "Pretty crazy, right? Never would have guessed it was something like _this_."

Sam and I looked at each other for a moment. She looked away, and my chest tightened again.

Right now, I thought, right now I should tell them. Even as I made the commitment to in my head, another part of me was asking why they really needed to know. What if they reacted badly? I nipped that thought in the bud – they'd just found out about all the supernatural things that were going on and they'd taken that rather well. Finding out Sam and I were together was such a non-event in comparison. It was hardly worth a mention. Not to them, anyway, and not to me. But it was important to Sam.

And it wasn't as if I was snogging her on top of the Sydney Harbour Bridge while cameras flashed around us, was it? I supposed I was going to do this, then.

I was still looking at her when I opened my mouth. "Actually, Sam and I weren't arguing about magic," I said.

Sam looked up, eyes wide, like she couldn't believe what she was hearing. I was looking at her as I spoke. It was harder than I expected it to be. "She's been wanting me to tell you that we're together," I said and then added hesitantly, "at least, I think we still are."

Sam swallowed, and her eyes filled with tears again. I love you, Sam, I thought.

Jammas double-took. "Wait, _what?"_ He and Macca shared a glance. "Do you mean—?"

Amanda rolled her eyes. "They're gay," she said flatly.

Macca looked at Sam, his face unreadable. "Then why did you…"

She winced. "Not gay exactly," she said, looking extremely apologetic. "But yeah."

He nodded slowly, just to acknowledge what she'd said. He was making an effort to smother whatever reaction he was having to that news, though. I hoped he wasn't angry at her.

"Wow," he said eventually, eyes veiled. "Man, you guys, all of this stuff at once? Just… wow. I think I need a time out. Can someone…?" He looked at Blanket. She was still looking really miserable, though, and wouldn't let go of him. He sighed. "Guess I'm staying with you," he said to Amanda. "Probably best I stay out of all this, anyway. Like I said before: in over my head on this stuff."

"You don't want to come and help us with Frost International?" I asked, thinking about that point at which I wished Macca had been there to help us carry Old Johnson. At his expression, though, I regretted choosing to word it quite like that.

He clearly _did_ want to come. "No, I do," he said. "This is what I do, you know? I try to stop corporations from pillaging natural resources and I've done my fair share of sabotage. But… I just have no fucking idea what's going on," he said. "This past five minutes…" He shook his head again. "Man. And before, too, you were even trying to tell me something about that stone being used on Old Johnson at the mine and I wouldn't even consider it." He winced, sucking in air through his teeth. "And I was so rude to that cop."

"It's probably better you just stay out of it," Amanda told him. "You and Jammas."

" _Amanda_ ," I said, for a moment not even caring if I annoyed her. She couldn't have kicked the puppy at a weaker moment.

She looked indignant. "What? It's true. I'm probably saving his life. They'll just get themselves killed."

Sam and I glanced at each other. Amanda _was_ probably right, I thought, thinking of Alex. It didn't make it any easier for Macca to hear it at that point, though. Especially not after the series of bombshells he'd just weathered.

He didn't say anything, and I couldn't read him. Jammas clearly could and came to the rescue. "Well, as much as it would be cool to save the day, I'm okay with me and Macca staying back with Amanda and Blanket," he said, actually sounding like he meant it. His eyes twinkled. "At least I now don't need to choose between my best mate and my future girlfriend." He waggled his eyebrows at said future girlfriend. Amanda stared dispassionately back at him.

Macca _did_ look at least slightly entertained by his antics.

Amanda didn't. "Creepy magic, remember?" She told him, not looking at all flattered.

"Yeah, you're not selling me on not wanting to see those moving tattoo-things you've obviously got, especially not now I know it's not some skin condition or some fascinating deformity," he said, grinning. She opened her mouth to protest and he talked over her. "And no, just for the record, I don't give up. I'm not a quitter."

Her exasperation was unfortunately hilarious. Even despite everything that happened, I couldn't help but smile at Jammas: you had to admire his level of persistence, even if it was probably in vain. Whether or not Amanda was interested in him was the big question, and I couldn't make any sort of guess at the answer. She wasn't making too much of an attempt to rebuff him other than feigning complete disinterest, but there could have been a number of reasons for that that. I kind of wanted to believe that she didn't want to hurt his feelings, but she'd felt quite free to hurt Macca's a moment ago by being insensitive, so I didn't know.

I watched her while she pretended to be ignoring us. I _still_ didn't know what her problem with me was. I didn't know the first thing about her, except that she could do magic. She seemed alright, though, at heart. I just didn't want to make the same mistake I'd made with Larson by not trusting her when there was no reason not to.

While I was watching her and Macca was teasing Jammas about Amanda, I spotted movement over her shoulder. I stepped sideways to get a better view of it.

There was a four wheel drive parked out on the main road, and there were two men in it. "Guys…" I began. The men on the road saw me looking and sped off, their tyres screeching on the road. The rest of our group turned around just in time to see the vehicle fishtailing around a dusty corner. The wind blew the dust across the road toward us.

"Shit, was that Frost?" Sam asked, holding her camera up and filming the tail end of them and the dust.

"I'd put money on it," I said.

"I'm not sure what you'd toss money on these days, though…" Sam said, giving me a little smile. It made my heart flutter to hear her joking about it.

"Let's get out of here before they come back and follow us," Macca said, patting Blanket's back. "We can worry about where to go when we're already driving."

Jammas ended up needing to drive, because despite all the recent commotion and distress, Blanket looked exhausted and on the brink of falling asleep. "You'd better not crash and kill us all," Macca warned him with a grin as we climbed into the car. "I just had this thing serviced."

"Sorry, who got us bogged in Woomera?" Jammas asked, putting his hand behind his ear and leaning towards Macca. "Who was that again? Was that me?"

While they were joking about, I realised Sam was standing back a little from the car. I turned around to check she was okay, and she looked at me from underneath her lashes. "Thanks for telling them," she murmured.

I glanced over my shoulder; the boys were still good-naturedly arguing and Amanda was searching through her bag for something.

When I turned my attention back to Sam, she exhaled and her shoulders slumped. "I didn't deserve for you to do that before," she said, looking down at the space between us and not at me. "I shouldn't have forced you."

"You shouldn't have," I agreed. "But I should have told them much earlier, anyway." I took one of her hands, and I saw her lips press firmly together. She was trying not to cry. "Sam, I'm probably never going to be exactly the way you want me to be about this."

She nodded briskly. "I know, I just…"

It was my turn to nod. "Yeah," I said. "It's hard. Believe me, I know."

She sighed. "I guess I just have to keep reminding myself that when you do something, it's not for the same reason that I'd do it."

I shrugged. "Or I should just remind you more often that you're absolutely everything to me. Everything."

She looked up at me. Her eyes moved from my eyes to my lips, and I could see her debating whether or not she should even bring up wanting to kiss me. I shook my head fractionally, and she swallowed and nodded.

Jammas wound down the window and leaned out of it. "You guys can pash _inside_ the car," he said. "That way we can all appreciate it. Well, except Macca. Come on."

Derby was a pretty small town, and it quickly became obvious that it was _full_ of Frost employees. They must not have seen the car we were in at the park, though, because we didn't attract any attention as we drove around.

"I'm not sure what to do about this," Macca confessed, looking nervously out the window. "It's only a matter of time before they figure out it's us and then I don't know what happens after that."

"It's not you they're looking for," I pointed out, looking beside me at Sam. "It's us and what's in our bag."

"I can look after it for you," Amanda suggested, surprising me. "It might be safer with us anyway."

It was odd of her to be so generous, I thought. Maybe bailing her out _had_ helped? It was a pity I had to turn her down. "No, I think I might need it to help Old Johnson," I said, smiling in appreciation of her offer. "We'd better take it with us, just in case."

"Are you sure?"

She was right in a way: it was a huge risk taking it. I looked at the bag in my lap. I knew what would happen if they found us, I'd become Frost International's number one fan and spokesperson, and god knows what would happen to the rest of them. But I was sure I'd need it to help Old Johnson. "I'm sure."

Blanket had fallen asleep on Macca's shoulder, her face mushed against his tank-top and a tangle of brown curls half-concealing her. Poor thing, I caught myself thinking. I wondered what sort of life she would end up living if I didn't manage to free Old Johnson. If anyone needed a grandpa with an understanding of the spirits, it was her.

"Can you drive us out to Windjana?" I asked Jammas. "You're right: it's only a matter of time before something happens to us all if we stay here. We need to finish this before anything bad happens to anyone else."

Jammas looked to Macca for the answer. Macca tilted his head, saying, "We'll drive you as close as we can get you without attracting attention," he said. "Although it seems like a lot of the employees are driving normal cars, so they might not even notice if we even drive _into_ the mine." He chuckled for a moment and then said, "If we get pulled over on the way out there we're fucked, though, because it would be a breach of bail."

"Just take us to the river, then," I said. "We can probably use it to get there and get in."

Macca raised his eyebrows at us, and gestured outside the car. I glanced out the window; grey clouds were beginning to gather in the sky. "I wouldn't risk it," he said. "This area gets very heavy rain and you don't want to be anywhere near bodies of water when it starts."

Sam was filming the overcast sky. "Do you think it's going to be a really big storm?" I didn't like the sound of it, either. It reminded me too much of Yamatai.

"Probably," Macca said. "This place doesn't really do 'half-arsed'. I hope you don't mind getting wet." He then winced at his choice of words and looked at Jammas.

Jammas grinned broadly back at him. "They probably don't mind getting wet," he said.

"Don't," Amanda warned him, a hand over her eyes. "Just leave it."

He ignored her. "Actually wet is probably exactly how they like their action."

I made a noise and jammed my eyes shut. Sam returned the ball for me. "What a pity you can't find out by _coming with us_ for some action," she said with false sweetness and then added more flatly. "Ever."

Despite the fact he was driving, Jammas turned around in his seat to beam at her. "You're awesome," he said, apparently having dropped his awful lesbian puns. "After all this is over, you and I are going out drinking. You can help me figure out how to make Amanda agree to date me." He then threw a U-turn and merged out onto the highway. "Next stop: danger."

That reminded me of something Alex had said once about being excited about sailing The Dragon's Triangle. Sam was looking at me and I wondered if she'd thought that, too. I touched her hand.

Once we were on the open road, I unbuckled my seatbelt and knelt on the floor in front of the seat to go through my suitcase. I couldn't take _that_ much, I thought. It would be handy to have some rope and the axe. I unzipped my pack and went through the contents, trying to decide what we'd need at the mine and what we wouldn't.

"I could really use a bow and some arrows," I said at last, thinking about what had really been missing from our last trip to the mine. "Even a gun would probably do – Sean's had a silencer on it." Amanda was pretending not to listen, but I saw her look up from behind us. "Not so I can murder loads of people for fun, by the way," I said at her.

"Yeah, I'm sure you just want them for recreational purposes," she muttered.

I decided to ignore her for now. "You boys don't just happen to have one, do you?" I supposed it was too much to hope for.

Jammas snorted. "Macca can't even step on a spider," he said as an answer to my question. "He starts this huge rescue and escort mission when he finds one. And me? I'm a lover, not a fighter." He winked at Amanda in the rear-view.

I made a face. "Okay," I said, holding up Sam's axe. "I guess this'll have to do for now." Sam was filming me again. I smiled at her.

Macca looked a bit spooked by the axe. "Should I ask you what you plan to do?"

I held it up again. "With this? If you can't step on a spider you probably shouldn't, no."

"You're not planning going on a spider killing spree with that thing, are you?" Jammas said, grinning. "Because for Aussie spiders you're going to need a much bigger axe."

Macca chuckled at him, but answered, "About Frost, I mean. Do you know what you're going to do when you get there? How are you going to save Old Johnson and destroy the mine?"

I sat back on my heels, thinking about our escape from the mine earlier in the day. The truth was I had _no_ idea. I didn't know much about mines at all. I did suspect there would be lots of explosives somewhere, and the oversized machinery and jumbo trucks would probably be quite destructive. I wasn't sure what point there was in blowing the place up, though. For a company like Frost International rebuilding would be a minor setback and pocket change, especially given what they were after in the rock. "We'll figure something out," I said eventually. "We always do."

By the time we'd reached the road where the blockade had been set up, I'd selected all the gear I thought we'd need. Jammas stopped well short of where the blockade had been, though: there were red and blue flashing lights up ahead and it looked as if police where in the process of clearing the debris.

"Yeah," Jammas said at length. "I'm not driving any further that way."

"Here's fine," I said, zipping up my case and pushing it back under the seat. Sam followed me as I slid the door open.

While I was checking all the gear on my belt, my hand brushed over the antenna of Macca's satellite phone poking out of my pocket. "Oh, Macca, your phone!" I said and took it out, but thought better of giving it back to him. "Can I keep this for now?" I asked him.

He twisted very slowly in his seat so as not to wake Blanket. "Sure," he said. "But you do realise you'll need to bring it back to me in one piece, right?" he said. "Which means you need to come back in one piece."

I smiled at him and then looked at Sam. "That's the plan," I said, and then looked at Jammas and Amanda. "Do either of you have satellite phones? It would be handy to be able to keep in contact if we need to." Jammas shook his head, but Amanda displayed a very obvious lack of reaction. "Amanda?" I prompted her.

She looked at the boys and then rolled her eyes. "Fine," she said, holding her hand out toward me. "Give it to me."

A little confused, I handed it over. She spent a few seconds keying something into it and then gave it back to me. I looked at the screen; she'd saved her phone number into the contacts. It reminded me of the first exchange I'd had with her. "I guess I did get your number after all," I said to her, smiling.

"Don't push it," she told me, and then retrieved her iPod from her backpack and put her earbuds in.

Sam and I climbed out of the car. Macca and Jammas were oddly restrained for just a moment. This was it, I thought, feeling the bird moving around on my back. I hope you know what you got us here for, I said silently to it.

"Good luck," Macca said soberly. "I'd hug you, but..." He looked down at sleeping Blanket. "You know." I didn't miss the fraction of a second where he made eye-contact with Sam and looked away.

"I'll hug them for you," Jammas offered quickly, pulling the handbrake up and hopping out of the driver's seat to round the car and scoop us up in his arms. Like Macca, he was basically a big slab of solid muscle and even though he was just being friendly he was squeezing me rather tightly. Fortunately he released us just as quickly, rubbing his thigh. He nodded at the axe hooked on my belt. "That thing is _brutal_ ," he said. "I'm going to have the coolest bruise." He then jabbed a finger at Sam. "Remember," he told her sternly. "You promised to come drinking with me."

She laughed. I loved the sound of it. "And what kind of person would I be if I broke my promise?" she asked him as he climbed back into the driver's seat.

Before I slid the door closed, Amanda and I accidentally made eye contact. Jammas noticed. "You not going to give Lara a hug?" he said, grinning far too widely at her. It was fairly clear the level of enjoyment he planned to get out of watching us hug.

"In your dreams," she said, turning up the volume on her iPod.

"I guess so," he said, and grinned at me. "Knock 'em dead."

"Thanks, everyone," I said. As I slid the door closed, I heard Jammas say to Macca, "Man, because of you I just hugged _Lara Croft_. Who's a _lesbian_. You are officially the best mate in the world." He honked a few times and then did another U-turn around us, driving back in the direction we'd come from. Sam and I both watched until the car had disappeared into the distance.

When she stopped waving, Sam smiled back at me. I didn't miss her giving me the once-over. She turned toward me and adjusted a couple of items on my belt. Her hands lingered on my waist. "I like you in all this stuff," she said, giving me that little coy smile of hers. "There's something really commanding about it. "

I looked down at my belt and all the various items attached to it. "As in, look at all the things I could kill you with?"

She laughed, encircling me in her arms. I felt the bird move out of the way of them on my back. "Yup," she said, smiling. "You could _totally_ top me right now, if we weren't about to go and trash the mine." Her smile faded as she watched me thoughtfully for a few seconds. When she spoke again, all that playfulness was gone. "This is it, right?"

I nodded, looking out toward the gorge and beyond it where the Frost International mine was. "Yeah, I think so."

"Well, unlike Yamatai and Atlantis, at least we're going into this together," she said, squeezing me. "Despite everything."

"I don't care how we go into it," I told her, bumping her nose with mine, "as long as we come out of it together. Come on." I led her off the road into the dry brush and warm orange sand so the police wouldn't see us as we passed. "Let's do this."


	20. Chapter 20

Thankfully this time there were no helicopters – presumably because of the impending storm. It was the first time since Yamatai I found myself actually _happy_ about bad weather. Avoiding the police was therefore simply a matter of giving them a wide berth as we circled around them and headed across the river.

The crocodiles were all gone. "I wonder where they went?" I said, looking out towards the centre of sand where I'd first seen Old Johnson playing. The whole gorge was completely empty of any wildlife at all, there weren't even any birds. The wind was howling through it and blowing my fringe into my eyes; it was like Yamatai all over again.

"I don't blame them," Sam said as we were wading across the river. The temperature had dropped dramatically while we'd been circling the blockade site and there was no sunlight to warm us as we climbed out. I wrung the water from my clothes as best I could, but with the wind blowing through them it was still quite cold. Additionally, there was a fair bit a sand blowing about and it clung to our damp trousers.

Sam filmed me. "We should have just walked across the bridge," she said. "I'd almost rather get shot at again than spend the rest of the day soaking wet and caked in orange sand."

I stood up, wiping my palms on my thighs. It didn't make them much cleaner. "A bridge?" I asked her. "I didn't see a bridge."

She shrugged. "I didn't, either, but how else did all those huge trucks get across the river?"

I raised my eyebrows. I hadn't even thought about that. It was too late to look for the bridge anyway, and it was probably safer to say out of sight as much as possible.

As we headed up towards the entrance to the cave, I looked back down toward the river for a moment. Without the bright sunlight shining into the water, it was dull grey instead of bright green. It looked no more dangerous that it had earlier, though. I wondered how much of Macca's warning came from someone who hadn't been through what Sam and I had. Surely _one_ storm on _one_ day wouldn't be anything to the level of what we'd weathered in Yamatai, would it?

I felt the bird move on my side, and it reminded me there were other forces at work here. I shivered, and looking up at the sky. The last thing I wanted was another Yamatai.

"Lara?" Sam was still filming me, but she sounded concerned. When I turned back to her, she was looking over the LCD at me. "Are you okay? You look…" She winced. "Angry."

It was only when she said that that I realised how low my eyebrows were. I relaxed my forehead. "Why?" I said neutrally as I walked past her. "Are you worried I'm still angry with you?"

She swung the camera around to follow me, but I could see her peeking out over the screen. "Maybe."

"You should be," I said. I turned around and walked backwards for a couple of seconds. "But I wasn't. I wasn't even thinking about that at all." I stopped and pointed down at the river. "Macca said something about it being dangerous in the rain. It's just difficult to picture because that part is so wide and shallow."

Sam looked visibly relieved, panning the camera back toward the river. "Well," she said. "I bet the guys working at Fukushima thought they were safe there, too." She turned the camera back toward me as we continued towards the caves. "And Macca's from here, you know? Well, from Sydney, anyway. He probably knows what he's talking about."

"I just hope we can get back across it afterwards, then," I said. "Maybe we'll end up using that bridge, after all."

When we got to the top of the gorge I headed straight for the cave entrance, but Sam stopped near the edge and spent a minute or two filming the sky. "That's incredible," she breathed. When I turned to look at her, her camera was pointed out towards the horizon. On it, the clouds were literally _rolling_ across the sky towards the gorge. It wasn't small scale like at Yamatai where the clouds would suddenly develop localised over a tiny area, either. The whole landscape from north to south was dwarfed by the thick thunderclouds spreading over it. In the far distance, lightening was flashing.

"Still think the river won't be a deathtrap?" Sam asked me. I didn't say anything; there was probably a _lot_ of rain in those clouds. "Is that the spirits, you think?"

I shook my head. "I don't know."

We watched the approaching storm for a few moments.

Sam looked thoughtful. "Did you read anything about the spirits and storms?"

"There honestly wasn't much about individual spirits," I said. "Ever paper mentioned how spiritual all the Aboriginal cultures are, and there were some comments about how the spirits impacted their everyday lives." I tried to think. "The Rainbow Serpent had some association with water. I really can't remember the details, though, and I left the iPad with the others."

"Well, the only thing _I_ can remember about the Rainbow Serpent is that you said something about it being female and bisexual," she said, and I could see her cheeky grin under the LCD. I almost knew she was taking the topic to the gutter before she'd even spoken. "So it kind of makes sense if it has some association with—"

"—I swear to God, Sam, if you start on the wet jokes I'm going to send you back to Derby and you and Jammas can knock yourselves out." I had a big smile, though, so I didn't think my warning had very much impact. "There were many, many different myths about it. It's difficult to know which ones are important here and which aren't." I looked back at the clouds spreading across the horizon. "But I suppose we'll find out."

We were familiar enough with the route back into the cave with all the paintings in it that it only took us a short period of time to get back in there. Again, the paintings all gathered on the far wall as I entered.

I gave my backpack to Sam and walked up to them, curious. Without the Slave Stone on me, some of them ventured down the rock toward me, stylised limbs contorting as they moved. This close, I could even see their eyes blink. It was absolutely fascinating; they were like living creatures.

"Lara!" Sam called, sounding surprised. I turned around and in the forward light I could see her pointing at me.

I looked down; there was a dull glow coming from underneath the side of my t-shirt. I lifted up the fabric to find the bird watching me. That was still quite unnerving, so I put my t-shirt back down again. "Amanda called them spirits instead of paintings," I told Sam. "And the way she spoke about them, it seems like they're all very different from each other, just like people are."

Sam didn't speak for a few seconds. "I hope you realise how much it's killing me that I can't film this," she said. I couldn't see her face as she continued because the light was beaming from in front of it. "You should see yourself: you've got all this hi-tech gear on and you're standing on a wall with _glowing paintings_ just chilling around you, _and_ you're talking about them. It's the shot of the century, and I can't film it."

I looked back at the wall. The intricacies in some of the designs were just beautiful, it was a huge pity that we couldn't take pictures of them. I noticed the light ebbing from them was ever so slightly tinted the colour that had been used to paint them in the first place. What looked like a bright red lizard stuck its tongue out at me, just as its living counterpart would.

"They're frightened of the Slave Stone," I realised aloud. "I wonder if it means the Frosts can hurt them?" They didn't react to what I was saying and I wondered if they could even understand me. I stood back and admired them. It was easy to see why Amanda specialised in this area – I wanted to spend all day in here, just studying them. I couldn't, though, we had work to do. "I suppose we should head back into the mine."

We searched the floor of the cavern for the entrance. As I felt around inside it, my hands closed on something man-made: a ladder. I looked over at Sam and motioned for her to turn the light off. Running my hand over the ground, I found a large enough rock and dropped it into the hole. It made a sizable noise as it landed on the rails of the shaft below.

Almost immediately, light filled the passageway below us. "Did you hear that?" a man was saying. "Do you think they're here after all?" The light was jumping around as if someone was walking with a torch. Sam and I leant our heads away from the tunnel just in time for the torch beam to not hit over faces as it shone upwards toward us. I heard the sound of a boot stepping onto the rung of a ladder.

I grabbed Sam's arm and pushed her towards the wall near us.

Then, I unhooked Sam's axe from my belt and made sure I had a very firm grip on it.

When the man got to the top of the ladder, I rounded behind him and tried to figure out the best way to quickly silence him before he saw me. I needn't have worried, though, because I'd forgotten about the paintings.

He stared at the glowing wall, saucer-eyed and distracted from his search for us. "What the fuck…?"

I took the opportunity to step in behind him and hook the curve of the axe under his larynx to silence him as I broke his neck. I eased the body quietly onto the floor and used his own torch to search him. "No gun," I whispered, hearing the disappointment in my own voice. "But…" I shone the torch on a set of keys and a radio.

Then, we switched off the torch and waited for the person he'd been talking to follow him up. The second guard wasn't as clean a kill as the first, because he must have suspected something. When he spotted us, he shouted and had already pressed the 'call' button on his radio before I managed to knock him unconscious.

"… _Ops Nine go ahead_ …" the radio said from his belt. The tower must have been fixed already. Sam and I looked at each other. " _…Ops Nine go ahead. Do you copy, Ops Nine?"_

God, I wished we'd brought Macca at that moment, neither Sam nor I would be able to pull off a convincing sounding Australian man.

Sam looked less panicked than I was and took the radio I'd rescued earlier from me and crouched next to the incapacitated guard. She held both radios facing each other and pressed her thumb on both the call buttons at once. No sooner had the radio spoken again, they both starting emitting the most awful squealing noise. I put my hands over my ears and cringed until she'd released the buttons.

Even the man on the other side of the radio groaned. " _…Jesus okay, I get it,_ " he said, sounding like he was speaking to someone else. " _Ops Nine, we'll send someone down there with a radio that works. Out."_

Sam stood up and tried to give the radio to me. "Feedback," she said. "Broadcast enemy number one."

I stared at her for a moment, and then pushed the radio back towards her. "I think you'd better be in charge of this," I said. "That was impressive."

She beamed at me and flipped her hair. I smiled like a complete fool for a few seconds. I'd missed her, even for the short space of time we'd been at odds with each other. She returned my smile, clipping the radio onto her belt and holding the camera up as I searched the other body. "Do you think they'll find them here?"

"Well, someone's coming down here with a radio for them, so I'm going to say 'yes'." I exhaled. "I could really use a gun."

"Sean has a gun," Sam reminded me.

I remembered those built shoulders and the narrow waist and solid stomach. There was something very commanding physically about him which reminded me of Roth. "I don't really like my chances of getting it off him if he's alive, though," I said. "And I get the feeling he's not your average corporate."

Sam watched me. "You mean like Natla?"

"I hope not," I said, stepping down onto the ladder. "At least we don't have to worry about her this time."

I thought more about Sean as we were climbing down the ladder into the mine. He'd drawn that gun awfully quickly and if we'd stayed a fraction longer in the room or on the tarmac I didn't doubt his bullets would have connected with us. That spoke to someone who was familiar with firearms. Roth was the same. In fact, he'd been somewhat of a connoisseur and he'd certainly had more than one gun with him on most trips. Especially when he was going into situations where he felt as if he might be in danger.

That was it, then! There might be another gun in his living quarters. Maybe more than one. "Sam," I said. "Do you remember if Sean or Diane mentioned where their accommodation was?" She shook her head and I made a face, fishing the ring of keys out of my pocket. I jogged them up and down in my hand. There had to be a good twenty-five, thirty keys on them. Surely at least one of these keys would fit their locks.

"Why?" she asked. "Are we going to wait until Sean's asleep and take his gun?"

I grinned. "Nope," I said. "We're going to sneak in there while he's awake and take his spare."

"Oh, great idea," she said, and then made a face. "Although it kind of means he'll still have one."

I tilted my head. "Let's not cross paths with him then."

The mines were just as much of a maze as I remembered. I hadn't thought to bring a compass so the only way we could tell if we were going in the right direction was if the ground was sloping upward slightly. Even then, we had to double-back a few times.

While we were at a Y-junction, I heard a voice shout, "Hey, Ops Nine? I got your new radios. You're not supposed to take the normal ones that deep inside the mine."

I switched off the torch and Sam and I backed into the tail of the 'Y'. I waited for him to walk past me, and then swung out and buried the axe in his between his shoulder-blades.

Sam let the camera drop as I put a boot on his back and pulled out the hook. "Wow," she said, looking stunned. I realised she'd never seen me do that before. "Yeah, as useful as Macca would be here… I don't think he's ready to see that. I don't know if I am, either. That's _brutal_."

I looked down at her axe, which was now dripping with blood. It _was_ disgusting, but I didn't really like to think about it too much. Anyway, it wasn't nearly as violent as watching Pierre be speared by the centaurs, but, then again, that hadn't been _me_ spearing him. Intellectually she knew the type of things I'd needed to do to rescue her in Yamatai, but I think knowing it and seeing it were two different things. I remembered her mantra when we'd been on a ledge high above the ground in Wollemi. "Zombie centaurs?"

 _That_ made her laugh. "Yeah, I guess it's not quite that bad," she said and then wrinkled her nose at her axe. "I don't want that back, though. It's all yours."

"I'm probably going to need it," I said, looking down at the body. Blood was slowly running down the mine shaft. "It's only a matter of time before someone realises there's a group of men missing down here."

Sam sobered. "Let's hope you have the gun by that point."

The entrance wasn't far from where I'd killed the guard. There was a big group of men hanging around the open mouth of it, chatting and smoking. Beyond them, the mine site looked quite dark, even though it was only late afternoon. Not dark enough to conceal us sneaking past them, though. Especially not with the bright fluorescent lights around the doorway. I exhaled at length. I supposed it was too much to hope that the Frosts would have skeleton staff on the lookout for us – of course they were going to take proper precautions.

We sunk back around the corner.

"We could distract them somehow," Sam suggested. "Although I'm not sure how, and there's like seven or eight of them."

"I should have completely destroyed that tower instead of just cutting the cables," I said. "It's the fact they can communicate with each other that's the real issue here. Seven or eight men… well, I've done it before. Not all at once, though, and not without a proper weapon."

Sam tapped her chin. "I could call the main office on Macca's cell and ask to speak with one of them. Maybe I could pretend we want to meet with them again and they'll call off the search?"

It was a good idea, but probably not the right one. We could hear the men laughing in the background. "I think it's too obvious where we are, and if we go too much deeper there'll be no reception."

While we were trying to figure out what to do, there flash of light outside. It was immediately followed by deep clap of thunder that resonated so loudly I could feel the vibrations in the rock I had my hand against. A loud noise was building near the entrance and I had to actually peek around the corner to figure out what it was: torrential rain.

"Welcome to Yamatai," Sam muttered.

After the next flash of lightening, all the fluorescent lights cut out and the men swore. It was only a few moments before strips of faint green LEDs around the doorway flickered on. It reminded me of emergency lighting in a plane.

"Fuck this place," one of the men at the entrance said. "I'm going to go and get my jacket. You guys want anything?"

"A new job," another guy said, and they all laughed. "I've been insulted by deadbeat crims all day and now I'm going to get cold and wet. I don't fucking care how much they're paying me, it's not enough."

The guard who had original spoken looked impatient. "Right, so on the way back you want me to drop past production and grab you some ANFO? You can blow the place up for us. You'll be a fucking hero."

"ANFO?" Sam whispered.

"Ground explosives," I told her. "You use them to break up rock."

Unfortunately, only the one guard left to get his jacket, leaving the other – six, I counted – to grumble in the doorway.

While we were trying to think, a group of 'deadbeat crims' wandered up to guards. "Hey, bro," one of them addressed the guard in an accent I couldn't really place. "You got a smoke I can have?" He had two colleagues with him and they reminded me of Jonah.

The guard didn't even look up. "Fuck off. You get paid enough to buy your own fucking smokes like the rest of us have to."

The man swore at the guard and spat at his feet as he made to leave, and the other guards laughed.

I had an idea.

I bent down and picked up a handful of gravel off the floor of the mineshaft, sifting through it until I found a nice big pebble. Then, _praying_ to whoever was listening that the stone would land, I threw it at the guard who'd refused to share his cigarettes. Thankfully, it hit him squarely in the back of the head. It was just a little too dark for them to have seen the rock come from inside the shaft instead of outside it.

The guard yelled and grabbed the back of his head, and then turned to the three men. "Which of you did that!" he demanded. The men looked blankly at each other, but then laughed at how angry the guard was. He lunged at the one who had asked him, grabbing his arm and twisting his hand behind his back. "You fucking _asked_ for it," he said, and then looked at his colleagues. "One of these losers chucked something at me."

Sam grinned at me as they all descended on each other, looking away from the LCD. "Compelling television right there," she said, wincing as she watched someone get their nose broken. "Ouch. Nice work."

I saluted her, and the gestured for her to follow me. With them all struggling with each other outside the mouth of the mine in the heavy rain, it was no problem for us to slip past.

Outside, the rain hit me like a slab of concrete. I'd never felt anything like it, not even in Yamatai. The droplets were huge and they were falling with such force that it felt like each of them was trying to pierce my skin. Within ten seconds, I was completely soaked through. Even as we ran across the ground there were already deep puddles forming and joining together.

"So, those covers we bought for the iPhones?" Sam said as we edged along a fence that segregated the mine entrance from the main yard. "I think we're about to find out if they actually _are_ waterproof." We reached the end of the fence and I stopped on the corner of it, looking around us. "Five new phones this year," Sam was still saying while she was wiping the lens of the camera with her sleeve. "I think we're personally responsible for the jump in Apple's share price."

I half-smiled listening to Sam, but I was trying to concentrate on where we were.

The heavy rain had cleared most of the men out of the yard. The problem was that the area was still really well lit, even with the emergency lighting. The lights were mounted at the top of really tall poles and climbing any of them would not only make me very visible but also be quite dangerous in this rain. I pushed my wet fringe away from my eyes and blew some of the water off my lips. Those lights are a problem, I thought. We couldn't get across the yard with them on, and there didn't seem to be any way to disable them. At least, not that I could see.

Additionally, I had to keep in mind I'd left three bodies in the mine, and that control would probably be expecting that third guard to return to wherever they were shortly. We had a tight time-frame to get Old Johnson out and then figure out what on earth we were going to do about the mine.

There was really only one way we could go, and that was back towards the rooms we'd nearly be locked in earlier in the day. I did remember there were dormitories near there, so perhaps it was the right direction to be heading in. "Come on," I told Sam, and led her behind another building.

It wasn't an overstatement to say there were guards _everywhere_ , though. There weren't so many walking about in the rain, but in most doorways there was a pair of them, grumbling about the weather and complaining about their jobs.

"Hang on," Sam whispered to me when I went to sneak around the back of a portable building. I looked back at her. "I want to get some more of this."

"…I reckon I'll stay here six months tops," one of the guards was saying. "What a fucking nightmare. It's no wonder turnover is so high for Frost. I swear to god that fuck thinks he's king of the fucking world."

I had been about to tell Sam we didn't really have time to hang around catching soundbytes, but this could potentially be an interesting conversation. The other guard also had an accent; I think it may have been South African. "You mean Sean Frost?" The other guard presumably nodded. "Eh, I've never met him."

"Did you know he's married to Belinda O'Dougherty?" I didn't recognise the name, but Sam did and she made a noise. "Yeah, how does an old guy get a fucking supermodel? They have kids and everything." I didn't think he was that old, and he was certainly reasonably good-looking and also very rich. I didn't find it at all strange he was married to someone like that. "I don't know. I don't like him. Him or his sister."

Well, that much I agreed with. "Let's keep going," I said, leading Sam back along the side of the building.

The accommodation was rows and rows of long, single-storey portables, all with one bedroom flats in them. Many of them had their lights on, so we were able to peek over the edge of the window a check who was inside without being seen. After I'd checked a few of them I'd come to the conclusion that a man was rich as Sean was unlikely to be staying in any of these tiny cabins.

We crouched against the wall. Sam's hair was flat against her face and she looked about five years younger. It reminded me of when I'd first met her, sans the eyebrow ring. "I don't think it's here," she said.

I looked around us. "Neither do I." I tried to remember what I'd seen when I was standing on top of the reception centre. There really weren't many large buildings on site, and most of them were clearly work spaces. I doubted there would be any living quarters near the reception centre and tarmac; even if there were, we couldn't get there with the lights on.

While I was trying to decide where on earth we should go next, a bird landed on the wire fence beside us. We both stared at it. It was _pouring_ with rain and there's no way a bird would even be able to fly properly in it.

Sam swung her camera around to film it and then hissed, lowering her camera and looking at the LCD. I guessed it had stopped working again.

Oblivious to what Sam had said, the bird cocked its head at us. It was a dove, or a pigeon, or something of that variety, with a single crest pointing up at the sky. There was nothing about it which suggested it wasn't a real bird and it wasn't here with us. Nothing, that is, except that it wasn't wet at all.

"Well," Sam breathed as we watched it. "This sure beats ten foot spears."

After a few moments, the pigeon alighted from the fence and flew just a short distance to land on another railing. It perched there, watching us. It was very clear we were supposed to follow it.

Sam made the same assessment. "Ancient GPS?" she asked as I walked up to the wire fence and tested it with a few shakes. "Kind of cooler than being ordered to turn a corner by a disembodied voice." She held the camera up again as I vaulted up onto the wire. "We should sell the idea to Garmin: 'Forget being yelled at by a computer, find your destination by chasing mythical Aboriginal spirits!'"

She lobbed her camera to me and then climbed over the fence herself. On her way back down the other side, I discovered her light-coloured t-shirt had basically turned into a window and I could see the lacy straps of her black bra on her shoulders. At least the front of her t-shirt had print on it. She noticed me looking and winked. Neither of us said anything, though. I smiled to myself as we headed up towards the railing where the pigeon was waiting for us. It was such a relief to have her flirting with _me_ again, although I did feel a bit bad for Macca.

As we approached the pigeon, it moved again. We followed it over paths and around buildings, until finally it settled on the roof of a portable structure that was set aside from the other living quarters. This particular building had a small makeshift garden out the front of it, as if it were trying to present itself well for guests. There were bars on the windows.

"That's it," I said. "That's going to be where they're staying." There were no lights on inside it, either. I hoped that was because Sean and Diane worked late and weren't inside. I turned toward Sam as the pigeon disappeared on top of the roof. "Help me up?"

Sam stood back. "You can make that jump without me," she said. "My shoulder's _still_ sore." At my expression, sighed. "Oh, my God, I _know_ you got half your scars saving me. Okay, okay..."

I put a boot on her shoulder. "There's also something satisfying about stomping on you after that whole business with Macca," I told her as I vaulted up to the roof and grabbed onto the gutter. In the process, the gutter bent toward us and slapped us with a wave of rain water. I had to scramble to get my grip before I swung up and helped Sam up, as well.

She pulled her t-shirt aside on her shoulder. "Look. I have boot-tread shaped bruises."

I couldn't see properly because of the poor light and heavy rain. "Really?" I asked as I squinted at her shoulder, a little concerned. I hadn't thought I was _that_ rough.

"No," she said, and then giggled at me.

I groaned. "I hate you, sometimes," I told her, crawling across the roof toward the bird.

"Well, you know what they say," Sam said, following me. "Hate is very close to love." She kept running with that thought as we edged across the sloped roof, water gushing all around us and making it difficult to keep a firm grip. "Actually, that's a pretty interesting theory," she decided. "I suppose they're both types of obsessions. Like, you can't stop thinking about the other person no matter what you're doing."

The bird seemed to be leading us out into the very centre of the roof, away from the support beams. I didn't like the give of the flimsy tin roof underneath me, but the bird had saved us once before. I decided to trust it.

Sam crawled behind me, and just as we both reached the very centre of the roof, the pigeon flew off the roof and straight up into the air. We both looked up after it, but it was gone.

Beneath us, the tin creaked, sagging under our weight. I looked down at it, scared to move. A nail popped out of the seam, followed by another, and then another.

Sam's eyes were wide as we looked at each other.

Before I realised what was happening, the roof caved in and Sam and I were dumped on the floor inside and smacked in the face with a torrent of rainwater from the roof. Just like I had been when I'd been splashed in Sydney, there was a brief moment where I expected to find myself spinning out of control, dragging by a raging current along a riverbed. Of course, that never eventuated. Even when I opened my eyes, I found myself afraid to breathe for a moment in case I inhaled water.

Finally taking a breath, I lifted my head off the sopping carpet. Sam had fallen on top of me, and one of her sharp little elbows had landed in the centre of my ribs. It _hurt,_ but at least she seemed to be alright.

She sat off me, rubbing the side of her head and looking around. "Don't we have keys?" she asked.

I'd landed on them in my back pocket, so I was very aware of the fact we had keys. "Perhaps the bird spirit thought it had a better idea?"

Sam braced herself on the bed beside us and pushed herself upright. "It's like when a GPS turns you down some random road and is cheerfully telling you to drive straight through a house," she said. "Our Spirit GPS thinks it's totally fine to enter via the roof."

"There were plenty of other ones on that cave wall," I said, grinning at her she helped me up. "Maybe we should have upgraded when we had the chance." I looked around us. It was a large bedroom with a desk. There was a suitcase open beside the bathroom, full of meticulously folded clothes neatly piled on top of each other. A second suit was hanging on the outside of the wardrobe. I hadn't seen a single man other than Sean Frost on site who was likely to wear such an expensive-looking suit, so there was no doubt this was his bedroom.

"Look for a gun," I said, making a beeline for the suitcase. I felt through all the clothes and ran my hands along the seam of the case. There were no hidden compartments or anything that suggested there was something concealed anywhere inside.

Sam had been searching through the desk drawers, but she'd stopped. "Huh," she said. When I glanced over at her to check to see what she'd found, she was looking at a photo frame. She showed me: it was a picture of a beautiful young brunette and Sean with three smiling children. They all looked very happy. "Interesting," she said, holding the photo at arms' length to scrutinise it. "Although if Sean is like my Dad as a CEO the kids are probably like, 'Who's this guy?', 'Mommy, why is this man trying to be in our photos?'"

I looked more closely at it; that didn't look to be the case at all. Two of the children hand their tiny arms around Sean's shoulders and his wife was holding a newborn baby as if it was the most precious thing in the world. I winced, feeling for Sam. "Keep looking," I told her. "I don't know how much time we have."

I'd searched through all his belongings and nearly given up when I realised Sean's suit was hung in front of the wardrobe and I hadn't opened it. I moved the suit and pulled the door open; there, hanging neatly in an armpit holster was a second pistol. I took out the _hanger_ it was on.

Sam snorted. "Wait, he _hung it up_?"

"I suppose he didn't want it to get creased," I said, smirking. I took it off the hanger and fitted it to myself, drawing the gun and checking the barrel: thirteen rounds. I searched everything again for more ammo but couldn't find any. Checking the mag again just to be sure there was definitely thirteen, I fit back into place and tucked it under my arm.

"Time to save the old guy?" Sam said, camera pointed at me.

"You bet," I said, and then looked around us. There was still rain pouring in from the hole in the roof at the carpet was basically a swamp. "And let's try and do it quickly, because I can't believe they're not going to figure out _something's_ up fairly soon." I felt safer with the gun, but I'd need to conserve ammo. I could easily waste four to six bullets just trying to down a single person.

The door unlocked from the inside, and we checked the coast was clear before we exited.

As much as I disliked storms, I was very thankful for this one. The heavy rain lowered visibility, hid the sound of our footsteps and meant there were very few people moving around the site. As long as we were careful to move along the back of buildings, it wasn't difficult to avoid being seen either by the guards or the miners. I also didn't need the help of my bird spirit to figure out where Old Johnson was; the Frosts had said quite clearly he was housed where we had nearly been locked up. Thankfully, it was right against the back of the site and there was absolutely no one anywhere near it.

Only one of the rooms had the light on. The problem was, despite the location of the building, it was on the second level and the door faced out toward the whole site. Anyone walking by would see us. I looked nervously behind us and then took the keyring out of my back pocket. It was a tedious process trying all the keys, and every time we heard anything at all I was sure I would suddenly find myself in a headlock with a security guard.

In the end, I found the right key and we slipped inside the room. Old Johnson was asleep on top of the blankets on a single bed, laid out like a corpse. Sam went straight over to him, camera out. "Oh, my God!" she said, reaching out to touch one of his hands. "Hey, Old Johnson?" She looked over at me for confirmation. "I can call him that, right?" I nodded.

I was more concerned about the fact that there was only a lock on the outside of the room, which meant that at any point someone could lock us both in there with him. There were bars on the window, too. I looked up at the roof; maybe it was made of the same material as Sean's? There was a wardrobe like Sean's in the corner, but much smaller. We could probably climb on top of it and use my axe to break through the roof if we really had to get out.

"Wow, his skin is really cold," Sam said, pulling her hand back as if she was touching a corpse.

I panicked for a moment, thinking of poor little Blanket. "Is he— _god_ ," I said, exhaling with relief as I saw his chest rise gently. "Okay, he's still alive." I slung my backpack over a shoulder and took out the box with the Slave Stone in it, putting the lid on the bed beside him. The stone glittered in the soft emergency lighting. I held it out toward him.

Nothing happened.

The stone still had that horrible aura, but Old Johnson continued to lie on the bed, unresponsive. I frowned. "Maybe he has to touch it?" I wondered, and put the box next to Old Johnson's hand on the bed, dropped his hand onto it and stood back.

Something about the aura of the stone intensified, but otherwise, still nothing.

"Shit," I said, pacing a little. I looked at Sam. "If you have any ideas at all, now would be a good time to share them."

She was filming everything. "You're the archaeologist," she reminded me.

"Well, we didn't exactly cover how to break enchantments in uni," I said, and then made a frustrated noise in the back of my throat. "I wish we'd brought Amanda with us." I wasn't sure exactly how much she knew about the Slave Stone, but it was definitely loads more than nothing, which was where I was starting from.

Sam made a face. "Amanda? Nah, I wish we'd brought Macca," was her response. "At least then we could just carry the old guy out if we can't figure out how to restore him back to normal."

I looked down at Old Johnson's hand on the stone. "There must be some way to activate it," I said, and then pulled up the fabric of my t-shirt and hunted around for the bird. I knew I'd found it when Sam's camera stopped recording. "Now would be a good time for some spiritual guidance," I told it. It just looked curiously up at me from my side. I was wondering if there was some alternative way of communicating with it when it suddenly startled and bustled under my waist band. I could feel it retreating all the way down my thigh.

I frowned and put my t-shirt down.

Sam's eyes were wide. She stood. "What was that…?"

I looked at her, and then heard voices outside the door. The loud rain made it impossible to hear them properly, though. They seemed to be arguing. The only thing that was clear was that they were about to enter the room.

"Shit, shit!" I hissed, leaping forward and hurriedly trying to scoop the stone into my bag without touching it. Then, at the very second the door opened, Sam and I scrambled into the tiny wardrobe beside the bed and pulled it shut.

There were ventilation slats in the front doors that we could see through. The door opened, and both Diane and Sean Frost walked into the cramped room.

I almost didn't have time to brace for the onslaught. Sam had her hand tightly clamped around my upper arm, and I was thankful for it. I felt 'myself' burst out of the cupboard and launch at her like a wild animal. This time I imagined drowning her, staring into those panicked eyes as I held her head under water until bubbles stopped pouring from her mouth. What was most difficult to deal with was the sense of pleasure 'I' felt at feeling her muscles go limp.

While I was struggling to contain myself, Sean stood by the door, wiggling the handle and frowning. "I don't think it was locked," he said.

Diane rolled her eyes at him. "Only if you didn't lock it," she said. "Which wouldn't surprise me."

While I was watching them, my eyes settled on a small shadow next to the bed. When I realised what it was, my heart practically stopped: it was the distinctive lid of the box the Slave Stone had been in. I must have knocked it off the bed on my rush to get inside the wardrobe.

Sam had noticed it, too. We looked at each other and I saw her throat bob. I curled my fingers around the gun under my arm.

"What now?" Sean said as they both stood at the foot of the bed watching Old Johnson.

While they were considering the unconscious man, two red lights started to blink on Sean's belt. There was some buzzing, too, and Diane took a small electronic device out of her lapel pocket. Before they had a chance to respond, though, a loud siren began to sound across the whole site. I could hear the echo of it from several different directions.

"A fucking lockdown..." Diane began, showing Sean the screen of the device she'd taken out of her pocket. "I _knew_ they were still here. Those idiots in Derby don't even know what they're looking for."

Sean didn't reply straight away, because he was focusing intently on something on the floor. He walked around the side of the bed, and, to my _horror_ , bent over and picked up the lid of the box.

"Yes," he said. "They _are_ still here."


	21. Chapter 21

Sam was clutching my arm so tightly my hand was tingling. As I watched Sean Frost pick up the box and examine it, time slowed down for a second. I released the safety on the gun. It made the faintest of clicking noises, but I felt as if the whole mine site might have heard it. In my mind, I could just see Sean drawing his own gun and firing directly through the thin wooden doors. I had to be ready to fire the first shot if I so much as saw him reach behind his back. I didn't want to find out if I could survive being shot by a .45.

Any second now, I thought, any second and he's going to look up at the wardrobe and lock eyes with me through the ventilation slats. I could hear every breath I was taking and my pulse throbbed in my ears.

"Well at least they brought the Slave Stone with them," Dianne said, walking over beside Sean and taking the lid of the box from him. Every time she turned her head and I saw the line of her neck under her ear, part of me imagined cutting through the delicate flesh there. I knew exactly how to do it; I could even use my pocket knife. Diane examined the lid, oblivious to the fact I was there and how much 'I' wanted to slice her to pieces. "Maybe I won't have to charge a new one after all."

'Charge a new one'? My mind raced. Slave Stones needed to be charged? How did that work? It did mean one thing, though: Amanda had asked the right question when she'd wondered if there were more. There probably weren't. At least, not yet.

Sean knelt smoothly down on one knee and looked under the bed. I could hardly breathe, I was _sure_ the next place he would search was the wardrobe. "They didn't drop anything else," he said.

Diane turned the lid over in her hands. "So, what now? If the site is in lockdown, it should be easy to see anyone moving around."

Sean shook his head. "That's probably not the best way to get them," he said. "Come on, Di." He gestured outside. "We have a site with five hundred money-hungry convicted criminals. Let's use them."

Diane watched him, her thin eyebrows low over her eyes. She wanted him to elaborate.

He did. "Offer whoever brings the four of them in one piece to us something substantial. Maybe ten thousand?"

Diane snorted. "It takes more than one person to catch four people. Make it a hundred, they can figure out how to split it amongst themselves." She thought for a moment. "They're will probably be some competition. Do we have enough security to deal with any conflict?"

Sean shrugged. "They'll probably want to be in on it, too, though."

Diane made a frustrated noise and shook her head. "You know what? I don't care. Let them fucking beat the shit out of each other. None of the labourers have even been given directives yet, and there's plenty more where they came from."

I frowned. 'Directives' seemed like an oddly formal word to use, even for her. It didn't sound like she meant ordinary instructions. It was difficult to focus too much on what she might have meant, though. I was too busy struggling with how much I wanted to kill her and how terrified I was that Sean would find us in here.

Diane looked down at Old Johnson. "We should get rid of the elder, though. Too many people will start looking for him if we just keep him here."

Sean was unreadable. "Kill him, you mean?"

Sam moved a little next to me and I heard her inhale sharply. I had the same reaction. If you draw on that man, I mentally told Sean, I swear to God I will shoot you first.

Diane made a face. "If he dies I don't want any connection to it," she said. "Just direct him to go—" She sucked air through her teeth. "—No, there's too much that can go wrong with that. Just don't give him any more directives and get Ops to dump him on the outskirts of Fitzroy Crossing. In this rain no one will see them do it. If anyone finds him before he dies of exposure, they'll probably just think he's drunk too much of that weird alcohol they drink and given himself brain damage."

Sean raised his eyebrows. "Fuck. Okay," he said simply. "You know he has a little girl—"

"—so do you, Sean. Three of them. And if someone were to tip off the police about a kidnapping, several deaths and the fact you have an unlicensed firearm, they're going to have children of their own before you get out of jail," Diane said calmly. Sean just stared back at her, but I could see the muscles in his jaw clench as he tried not to let her see his reaction. "Go get the whole site looking for those little shits. The two girls, I want them in my custody so I can give them directives as soon as possible. A TV heiress and her actress friend: there's a lot I could do with them. The other two just have to live so we don't get investigated and what I just mentioned doesn't actually happen." She looked down at the lid again. "I don't like not having a stone. I'm going to go to Processing in the meantime and see if there are any others big enough to charge. It might be useful to have two, anyway."

Diane was speaking like everything had already been decided, and didn't look at all concerned about the impact of the threats she'd made to her brother. Sean didn't even say anything about them at all. I expected him to warn her not to bring his family into it, or warn her that she could _also_ be implicated, but he didn't. He didn't say anything about it. When he spoke, it was about something completely different. "What if they know how to use the Stone?" he asked her. "They could have all five hundred of the labourers and all of the security—"

"—handle it, Sean," Diane said dismissively. "Just handle it."

I glanced back at the strap of my daypack. The stone could control so many people at once? God, that made me nervous. I was glad Natla wasn't around to exploit it. Diane and Sean were no Atlantean queens but if they were going to use it on politicians and potentially hundreds or even thousands of other people… well, I couldn't let that happen.

So 'Ops' would dump Old Johnson near Fitzroy Crossing. That was alright, I though, nodding to myself. I could work with that. It at least meant Sam and I wouldn't need to find a way to carry him out of the mine. I would just have to find a quiet area later that had enough reception for me to call Macca and the others so I could tell them to collect him.

Sean reached around behind his back and, by reflex, I drew the gun from the holster, ready to fire it. He didn't hold the gun up, though, he just checked the barrel and then tucked the gun in the front of his belt.

Diane had been watching him. "You can come with me to Processing," she said. "I don't know what training those kids have had, but if there's two dead and one critical like my pager said, I'm not taking any chances."

Sean actually didn't look too pleased about that request. He didn't refuse, however. He just took his radio off the back of his belt and held it near his mouth. "It's Sean Frost," he said into the mic, dispensing with the comms lingo. "You can cancel the lockdown. I want you to broadcast that there are four eco-terrorists on site, a blonde man with dreadlocks, two young women and an aboriginal child. I want them all in custody in one piece. Tell them the reward is one hundred thousand dollars – no part payments. All four or not a cent. Remind them anyone caught injuring another employee will still be subject to severe pay cuts."

There was a silence, and then the radio crackled. " _…Ops Fifteen_ ," the radio said. " _Did you say a hundred thousand dollars?_ "

Sean glanced at Diane. "That's right, Ops Fifteen."

"… _Holy shit. These must be some serious tree-huggers._ "

"Who we're serious about catching," Sean said. "Also, tell the site no one's to go through their belongings. If I found out anything has been taken from them, not a cent. And I need four Ops to bring a van around to Isolation asap. The guys who have been working here the longest, please."

"… _Control,"_ another voice said. " _Roger that, Mr. Frost._ "

The wailing alarm outside cut off, replaced by a voice over the PA. As control started to issue instructions to the site, Sean talked over them. "I understand why you want this mine," he said. "But this is an awful lot of fucking trouble for one cave." One cave? "And Frost International was doing just fine before we got involved in this voodoo shit. Every time I use it I ask myself what the fuck I'm doing. Call me old fashioned, but I think it's too much trouble."

Diane scoffed at him. "Well, you would," she said. "And that's why Mum and Dad left _me_ in charge. You don't think big enough."

Sean sighed. "Fuck you, Di," he said, sounding resigned. "You have no idea how big I think." Diane didn't seem to understand what he meant, and he didn't look like he wanted to explain it. He shook his head. "I'm going to wait outside," he said, and left. The door slammed behind him.

The second he was gone, those violent hallucinations intensified. Diane was all alone, defenceless, standing probably less than five feet from me. It would be easy to kill her _right_ now, with Sean gone. I could probably put a bullet right between her eyes, just one. Before she even blinked she'd be on the floor with blood pooling at the back of—

Sam shook me. I didn't realise why until the door opened, revealing a security guard wearing a bright orange japara. "Boss," he said, acknowledging her. Two more followed him inside.

Diane gestured at Old Johnson. "He's drunk himself into a stupor. I can't have his drinking habits associated with Frost International. Dump him outside Fitzroy crossing, try not to put any bruises on scratches on him, okay? Don't be seen."

The guards looked at each other. One of them nodded. "Okay," he said, and didn't ask any further questions. The two other guards sling-carried him out of the door, trying to be gentle. Despite the care given, it was awful to watch such a proud man being swung around like a sack of potatoes. When I phoned the others to get him, Blanket would have to see him like that. Poor girl, I thought. She doesn't deserve this. Neither of them do.

Diane followed them out. I listened for the sound of the door locking, but I didn't hear it. At least we wouldn't be breaking through the ceiling again.

We waited until we were sure they were gone, and then slowly pushed the doors open and climbed out of the wardrobe. I stretched my legs, looking at the empty bed.

Sam leaned into me. "Sean sounds like he doesn't want Diane to do whatever she's doing," she whispered. "Maybe we can use that?"

I shrugged. "He shot at us, Sam," I reminded her. "He's not on our side."

She didn't look convinced. "I don't mean, like, to join forces with him or anything. But it might come in handy."

She was probably right, but I couldn't really sit and think about master plans when we were in so much immediate danger. I motioned for her to come and stand behind my back as I approached the door. Opening it a crack I pointed my gun toward it, and then kicked it further open with the toe of my boot and corner-checked. There wasn't anyone on the walkway, but I could see Diane and Sean jogging back across the brightly lit yard toward the work buildings. One of the guards had given Diane his safety japara and she was holding it over her head. It was like a bright orange flag showing me the direction they were moving in.

In the yard and all around the dormitories, there were men _everywhere._ They would see us the minute we stepped onto the walkway, and we were half of their ticket to a hundred grand.

I leant back into the room and took a breath, looking across at Sam. "Are you ready for this?"

She grinned, but there was something hollow about it. "Absolutely," she said with false enthusiasm. "I _love_ running for my life."

I mirrored her smile, and then peeked around the door again. "Right," I said. "Let's go."

No sooner had we stepped outside into the pounding rain I heard shouting and someone pointed a torch at my face. Fortunately it was from the ground which was some distance below us. At least I didn't have to try and figure out which direction to run in; I pelted towards the kitchen we'd jumped through earlier that day.

The rain made it hard to see properly, and I couldn't hear Sam's footsteps to know if she was behind me. I threw a glance over my shoulder to see her hot on my heels as we sprinted along the suspended walkway. The door to the kitchen was missing – they must have rammed it off trying to get inside earlier – and the window was boarded. We wouldn't be going through it, after all.

I looked either side of the kitchen. Two walkways led in opposite directions. God, which way to go? I ran down the walkway that led to the darker stairway. As I did I could feel the steel grid shake heavily under our feet; there were people running across the other side of it after us. You have the gun, Lara, I thought. Remember that.

Rather than bothering with the second half of the stairs I vaulted over it. Sam copied my movement with less grace and landed awkwardly on the concrete beneath us.

"Are you alright?" I asked her, helping her upright. "Is your ankle—"

"—Go, go!" she interrupted, pushing me. I hadn't realised how closely the men had been following us until a hand reach through the railing and nearly grabbed Sam's t-shirt. I gasped, pulling her away from it.

We ran between a pair of dormitories, over a railing and down a slight incline onto an internal road. I took just a second to look about us and my eyes rested on recreation building that had two doors on either side of it. If they thought we were hiding in there, it might open some distance between us and we could lose them. "Come on!" I called to Sam, taking her hand. The door was locked, but it was just a flimsy portable building. I stuck the axe under the handle and snapped the whole lock out. It fell on the ground beside us. I let Sam go through first and then I followed her, sliding the closest item of furniture which was a work table up against the door. "Go across and out the other side," I told Sam, throwing a couple of chairs on the ground just for good measure.

The other door was locked, too, but since they opened outward I just kicked it, breaking the cylinders out of the deadlock. At least that meant I was able to push the door to and make it look as if we hadn't used it. Crouching, we ran along the side of the building around the back of another set of flats. We needed to go through it to get out the other side.

Inside, with the sound of the rain muted, I could hear men talking. "Check every fucking room," someone was saying. "I want my twenty-five."

"If you didn't gamble in the first place you wouldn't be so fucked anyway," another voice said.

The sound of a sharp slap echoed through the long corridor inside. The next person who spoke had a Russian accent. My heart pounded. "Shut up, idiot," the voice said. "You want to warn them? You want them to go climbing out the window so you don't get your money?"

"Fuck you, _Ruski_ ," one of the other men said, clearly calling him by a nickname. They sounded like they were coming toward us, but it was hard to tell because of how dark the building was inside. "Just check that one."

Sam and I slunk along the corridor, following the emergency lighting. Torches were beaming from the side corridors and it was difficult to know how close they were. In the end, we made it to the far door.

Sam shone the forward light on the lock while I knocked away at it until it popped off the door.

"They're not here, let's check the other side," someone said. I glanced back towards the voices. God, they were close. Too close.

I twisted the handle and pulled the door, but all it did was make a loud shaking noise. I tried again, aware of how audible it was.

"What was that?" I heard the Russian man say, and then there were footsteps on the linoleum.

"Shit!" I took the camera off Sam and shone it all the way up the door… to find a pinlock at the very top of it. I wouldn't be able to reach it.

"Get on my back," Sam told me, panicking and glancing behind us at the dark corridor.

"There's not enough time!" I said, shining the camera all over the area in case there were any windows I could smash and we could jump through.

The men rounded the corridor. "There's the chicks!" One of the men shouted. I couldn't see them very well, but there were four torch beams. There was no avoiding this, I was going to need to try and shoot them all before they got to us.

I held the gun up as they approached. I couldn't see them, though, because of the bright torches. I shot several times where I thought their bodies would be, but from the sound of it I only connected with one of the men.

Beside me, Sam was screaming, but her scream stopped short by a heavy sound; someone had put their hand over her mouth.

"Sam!" I shrieked but something heavy collided with the side of my head and then I fell against the door and against the ground, dazed.

"That's for fucking shooting me, bitch!" A man's voice was screaming at me. He groaned and made a pained noise. "Shit," he appeared to be talking to the other men. "There's blood pissing out of this. Jesus. Give me your belt."

"Just think of your twenty five thousand," the Russian man said again. "Don't touch my fucking belt. That's for her hands."

I couldn't see anything because there were at least three torches shining on my face. I was trying to get up, that much I was aware of. I couldn't tell which way was up, but I was pushing myself off the flat surface which had to be the ground. "Sam…?"

I felt a knee against my chest and I realised the pressure on my wrist was someone standing on it. That explained why I couldn't get up. "So," an Australian voice said. "Where's the boy and the kid?"

"Not here," I said. "So you might as well let us go, because with just two of us you're not getting a cent." I felt a sharp pain in my side and I curled around it. Someone had kicked me.

"Nice try," he said. I felt something cool and solid on my temple. When the safety clicked, I realised it was the gun. "Tell us or we'll kill you. Like you said. You're not worth a cent without them."

"Jesus. Jesus…" the other man was still saying. He sounded like he was panicking. "Guys. Fuck. I'm bleeding like a fucking river here."

"Good, more money for us," the Russian said, flatly. His voice was beside me, and I could feel him slipping the belt under my wrist.

The light shone on Sam for a second. She was face down on the ground and there was a boot on her back. Her face was turned away from me and for one awful moment I thought she might be unconscious. Then I saw she was holding the camera innocuously beside her thigh and pointing it up so the lens was facing the men. The LED was flashing and I nearly cried with relief. As I turned back to the matter at hand, I was dimly aware of how impressive Sam's dedication to a good shot was. We were in mortal danger and the camera was still rolling.

The gun pressed heavily into my cheek and there was a torch directly in front of my face. Behind it, I could see a man with thick facial hair. "I asked you a fucking question!"

I had been about to fire something back at him that definitely would have earned me another kick in the side, but there was a dull thump and then something heavy fell on my chest. For a moment I thought I'd been shot, but the crushing continued and I could feel my own breath on my face. I realised the man holding the gun had fallen on me.

"What the—" One of the other guys began, and then stopped short, just as Sam had.

There was shouting. Two new voices were speaking Chinese to each other.

"They want the money!" the Russian man said, and then stood up and got punched.

The man on top of me was out cold – so much that he was drooling on me. I felt along his arm until I found the gun and then slipped it out of his relaxed hand. His torch was in the other hand, and I pointed it at the group of men. They were actually fighting with each other. I used the torch to differentiate them, and shot the two I thought looked most dangerous. They didn't notice at first because they were shouting so loudly at each other, but when there were only two of them left, they looked at each other, and then at me.

"That's better," I said, and rolled the body off me so I could stand. I don't think they'd even realised the man supposed to be pinning me to the ground was unconscious. I could have easily shot them both, but I didn't want to waste any more bullets and I probably didn't need to kill them for us to get away.

Beside me on the ground the sixth man was still bleeding; he'd sunk to the floor against the wall and was breathing very rapidly. There was a pool of blood around him and it was gushing out of a bullet hole in his thigh. He wouldn't be leaving this place. He knew it, too, I could see it in his eyes.

I gestured at him. "You want to join him?" I asked the other two men. "Do you?" Both of the men looked at each other. "Then get out of here," I said, waving the gun at them. "Go!"

Both of them looked at each other for a moment, and I know at least one of them was considering making a lunge for me. In the end he didn't, and they both ran down the corridor and out of the door where we'd entered.

I shone the torch down at the pile of bleeding, twitching men. God, there was blood _everywhere._ With the storm outside, I almost expected myself to walk out the door onto a Japanese island. Against the wall, the first man I shot was already unconscious and taking agonal breaths.

I hadn't see Sam stand up, but she was filming. "Whoa," she said, looking horrified.

I put the safety back on the gun and put it into the holster, closing my jaw. "Are you okay?" I asked her, putting a hand on her shoulder and giving her the once over with the torch before discarding it. She looked to be in one piece, and I couldn't see any blood on her. Confirming my assessment, she nodded. I smiled briefly. "Help me with the lock?" She did, and I climbed on her back to snap the pin with the axe.

The building opened up into the well-lit yard, but the doorway was protected by an awning. We stood in it while I peeked out. There were groups of men walking around, searching through bins, under the portable buildings, everywhere. It was only a matter of time before they found us if we waited here for too long. They'd definitely find us if we run out into that quadrangle with all the big lights shining down on it, but there wasn't any other way for us to go.

Like a shining beacon, a huge white building on the far side of the quadrangle had the sign ' _PROCESSING_ ' suspended across its walls in the Frost International font. Bingo, I thought.

"We could make a run for it," Sam suggested. "We'd probably be okay. You have the gun, after all."

"And six bullets left in it," I reminded her. "There's more than six men out there." As I was speaking, I noticed something on top of the lights. I squinted at it, but couldn't figure out what it was until it alighted and flew away through the rain.

What was the pigeon spirit doing on top of the light? While I was trying to figure out what it meant, I spotted it on a light on the other corner. That was a little unnerving; it hadn't flown in that direction at all. It was odd to be reminded it actually _was_ a spirit.

"What's it doing?" Sam asked me. I shook my head, watching it land on the third light. When it landed on the forth, far off on the other side of the quadrangle, it didn't reappear.

"The lights," I thought aloud. "Four lights…" All the counting I'd been doing had been of bullets and that reminded me of the gun. I looked down at it. "Four lights, six bullets." I drew my gun, and then looked across at the lights at each corner of the yard. "Of course," I said. "I could never kill this many man with six bullets, but if they don't see us I won't need any at all."

With the pigeon gone, Sam held the camera up, pointing it at where my gun was aimed.

I lined up the shot and held my breath, pulling the trigger. A shower of sparks erupted from the globe as it blew out. The roar of the rain and the fact there was a silencer on my gun made it look as if the weather had caused them to short-circuit. I shot the second light, and the third. I missed the fourth because it was so far away, and swore. I used the fifth bullet on the light before it finally went out.

One bullet left, I thought. I put the gun back in the holster.

"That was pretty cool," Sam said, sounding impressed. She turned the camera on herself. "I'm dating that," she told everyone, sounding very proud. When she pointed it back at me, I pulled her trick and winked at it as I put the gun back in the armpit holster. I supposed it was much easier to be impressed when I shot objects instead of people.

"All clear," I said, and we slunk around the edge of the quadrangle in the shadows of the surrounding buildings until we'd made it all the way around the yard.

We collided with two men on the way into Processing. They were just as surprised as we were, and I took advantage of that to knock one of them unconscious with the axe. The other man looked familiar and for a moment we just stared at each other.

Sam frowned at him. I didn't really want to take any chances, so I just swung the join of the axe into his jaw before he could catch me off guard. He dropped to the ground and I stood over him. "Isn't that the guy who—" I began, but Sam finished my sentence.

"Yeah, it is," she confirmed, and then stood over him and said very sarcastically. " _Ni hao_."

I grinned at her, and then put my axe back on my belt and drew the gun. I opened the magazine just to be completely certain I'd counted correctly and there was only one bullet. I had, and there was.

Sam was switching memory cards. "You know what really sucks?" she asked me as she popped the spare in. "I just thought of something really cool I could have said to him."

"Oh?"

"Yeah," she said. "'Actually, my people say ' _adeus_ '!'"

She tested the camera again while I looked nervously down at the unconscious men. "Is that Portuguese?"

"Yup!" she said, and then snapped the case closed. "Let's go."

Processing was a huge multi-level facility. A huge roller door big enough for jumbo trucks backed onto the edge of an equally as large conveyer belt. The belt travelled a long loop around the floor of the facility, around a central control panel with big glass windows in the centre. Along the belt there were a number of different stations on the floor for filtering and separating the ore from the rest of the rock. The machinery was completely pristine and brand new, though. It had obviously never been turned on, so I don't know what Diane thought she was going to find in here.

The Frosts weren't in the central area, though. I couldn't see them anywhere. The central processing area went up to the roof, and all the other levels had walkways that opened out into the space over the factory floor. I looked up at all the other levels. There were just so many doors up there; the Frosts could be in any of them. A lift serviced the levels but that was the last thing I wanted to use.

Well, at least there at least didn't appear to be any other men in here looking for us inside. Small mercies, I supposed.

"Over here," Sam said, finding stairwell. We ran up it to the first level, which seemed to be full of equipment for controlling the processing machines. They weren't on the second level either, or the third.

On the fourth level, there was a door was unlocked on the open walkway where the lifts were, and the light was on inside. Here you are, I thought. I motioned for Sam to stay where she was, and edged up to the door.

My heart was pounding. As I approached the door I mentally rehearsed shooting whoever was inside so that I wouldn't even hesitate. The door had metal hinges and I couldn't risk it squeaking if I tried to open it slowly.

Taking a breath, I kicked it open and held up my gun. Diane's borrowed orange japara was hanging in the corner directly opposite the door, and I was so wired that I accidentally used my last bullet to shoot it. Even as I was pulling the trigger I realised it wasn't her.

Sam's shriek made me spin around.

Sean was standing behind Sam with his gun to her head. " _Olá_ ," he said to her, and to me, he said, "Drop the gun. Over the edge."

I did, immediately, throwing it over the bannister into the central facility. There was no point in keeping it anyway, I had no more ammo.

Sam stared at me, panic evident. She was looking at something behind me, and before Diane even spoke I knew it was her. I still have the axe, I thought, surprised. He could clearly see it on my belt, and I could easily kill his sister with that. God, I _wanted_ to. He should have told me to throw that down, too. Why didn't he?

"Could you possibly be any louder?" Diane asked from behind me. "I think you woke up the dead on the way in here." I felt deft hands unzip my bag and rifle around inside it. "Where are the others?"

"Not here," I said. "Not even in the mine."

She snorted as she continued to search my belongings. "You're lying."

"You're right," I said, and then shouted to no one, " _Now_!"

Both Diane and Sean looked startled, as if they expected Macca to jump up from the shadows at them. It was enough for me to shove Diane backwards and make a lunge towards Sean and Sam.

I stopped dead in my tracks when I heard Sean's gun fire. " _Sam!_ "

When she opened her eyes again, she just looked extremely spooked. I could see her legs shaking, but he hadn't shot her. There was a bullet hole in the wall beside them. Sean did _not_ look pleased. "Nice try," he said. "Diane wants you both alive, which is why I haven't already shot you. But if it comes down to a choice between shooting you or getting hurt myself, I'm sure you can imagine which I'm likely to choose." He looked behind me. "Just do her quickly before she tries something else."

Diane walked around in front of me. She didn't look triumphant, though, just exhausted and a bit angry. In gloved hands, she was holding the Slave Stone.

Sam struggled. "No!" she yelled. "No, Lara, just run! Just run!"

Sean easily restrained her. "You know what happens if you don't do as we say," he said pleasantly to me, jabbing the gun into Sam's temple.

Diane held out her hand, motioning for me to raise my own. When I didn't she took it anyway. This close to her, there were _so many_ ways I could hurt her. I could bury my axe in between her collarbones. I could strangle her, throw her over the railing and watch her slam against the concrete and machinery four storeys below. I could even wrap my hands around her neck and just _snap_ it. Why on earth did Sean not take the axe off me?

I looked over Diane's shoulder and him, and he raised his eyebrows at me as if he were impatiently waiting for me to do something.

What?

Before I could figure out what that meant, Diane wrenched my hand and placed it palm down on the stone.

The second my hand connected with it, it stuck fast to my palm and something about it _opened_. It had a black hole-like pull about it, and my innards were being sucked through a vortex into it. Diane was saying something. I could see her lips move and I could hear sound coming out of them but I couldn't hear her properly or understand her. I wanted to struggle, to grab onto the railing, to her clothing, to _anything_ that would prevent me from being eaten by the stone. Part of me _was_ struggling wildy, even though I was dimly aware of the fact I was standing completely still. Like quicksand, though, I just kept sinking further into it as I tried to resist.

When it finally enveloped me completely I just stood there in total darkness. There was nothing at all around me.

A voice was speaking, though. "Listen to me," it said. I recognised it. "Listen to me."

I couldn't _not_ listen to it, there was nothing else at all here. It was sensory deprivation in the truest sense. When I opened my mouth, nothing came out of it. Even when I squinted toward where I thought the voice was coming from, I didn't see anything. Or did I? 'ran' toward it, although I didn't move at all. The air around me was as thick as soup, but I could see the speaker approaching me. When she was close enough for me to recognise her, I thought I would probably see Diane. She was the one giving me instructions.

When the woman was close enough to me and my vision cleared enough to be able to see her, I got the shock of my life. It wasn't Diane.

It was me.

I think I screamed. It just gazed back at me, placid and relaxed. Its eyes were complete empty of any emotion. "I'm listening," it said. I think the words came out of my own mouth.

"No, I'm _not_!" I tried to shout, but no sound emerged. Not even empty breath.

Diane may have been speaking, but at that point I heard Sam's voice as if it were present in my head. "Listen to _me_ , Lara! Don't listen to Diane!" she was screaming. It reverberated around my head, shaking my skull and filling every crevice of wherever I was being held. "Don't listen to anything she says, stop listening! Stop listening!"

The effect was immediate. Like a snapped rubbed band I sprung back into my body, and the impact of being reunited with it was disorienting. Someone was close to me, I think it was Diane. I shoved her away from me by reflex and heard the sound of an object hitting the carpeted walkway. I kicked it over the edge down into the main facility. She _shouted_. Putting a hand against the railing, I braced myself. I wasn't sure that I wouldn't pitch over it if I didn't hold onto something. God, my head…

Sean looked as if he almost wanted to roll his eyes. "Fucking hell!" he said as Diane leaned over the edge and watched the stone clatter on the ground below.

"Jesus fucking Christ," she hissed. "This is fucking mayhem. I'm just going to charge the second stone." She patted a bulge in her pocket.

Sean stopped her. "Di," he said. "Aren't you going to go after that one?" He motioned over the edge towards where the stone had fallen with a nod of his head. "It's right there!"

She looked disgusted. "And get myself killed in the crossfire? No thanks. Good luck," she said a little sarcastically to him, and jogged down the other direction on the walkway. From the way she moved, I could see didn't share her brother's athleticism.

In the confusion, Sam elbowed Sean very firmly in the stomach. He bent double and the gun dropped from her temple, enough for her to elbow him a second time and then grab his wrist with the gun in it. This wasn't going to end well if she was going to turn it into strength competition. I staggered toward them, my head clearing as he was shouting at her.

She didn't try to wrestle the gun from him, though, she just twisted the skin on his wrist very roughly and smacked it on the railing. The gun fell from his hand and I heard the thump of it falling on the conveyer belt below.

He turned angrily to her and slapped her so hard she fell over, growling at the back of his throat. She sat half upright, holding her face and looking stunned. He was lucky I didn't have anything to shoot him with at that second, that was for sure.

Sean and I both looked over the edge of the railing at the gun on the conveyer belt and the Slave Stone on the floor. Then, we looked at each other.

 _Shit._ I had to get that gun and the stone before he did.

I launched myself towards the stairs as he went for the lift. They'd used it to get up. Because of that, it chimed and the doors slid open immediately as I stepped onto the stairs. I could hear Sam following me as I sprinted down them, jumping down as many sets of them as I could. When I got to the ground floor I realised I'd beaten the lift down and ran over to it, unhooking the axe from my belt.

I stood beside the lift, axe ready. When it chimed again and the doors slid open, I took a deep breath. No one came out of it, though.

I stood, confused, and then something connected solidly with my head from behind me. I dropped like the stone had, and after a moment I was aware of the cool concrete against my cheek.

Sean had begun to say something, but then he shouted with surprise. I rolled over and tried to push myself up, spotting Sam with a fire extinguisher in her hand. She was spraying him with it and coating him in a thick white foam as he tried to shield himself.

It was enough time for me to knock his legs out from underneath him I go for my axe which I'd dropped some distance from me. When I'd managed to get it, however, he was already on his feet. For a moment I thought he might try and restrain Sam to use against me again, but she brandished the extinguisher at him. "I don't know if this stuff makes you blind like oven cleaner does," she yelled at him. "But if you come any closer you'll find out!"

That's my girl, I thought, grinning. I took off towards the conveyer belt.

Sean ran after me for a short distance and then gave up and took a detour to a control panel. He lifted the sheet of clear plastic from the buttons and turned a key. The machines shuddered and lights flickered to life on them.

"But the power's out!" I said aloud, confused.

His smile didn't reach his eyes. "Diesel-powered machinery is a lot cheaper to run," he called back.

I wrinkled my noise; there were exhaust pipes leading outside but I could still smell it. "And I'm sure it's loads better for the environment, too," I said dryly.

He didn't miss a beat. "Do you drive, Lara? Or fly in planes? What impact do you think _that_ has on the environment?"

Sam was listening from the edge of the floor, hugging her fire extinguisher with one hand and holding her camera with the other. "Yeah, that's totally on the same scale as a diamond mine," she yelled. I was glad she was getting all of this on film, Macca would be _furious_.

Beside me, the conveyer belt started to move. Through the glass control room, I could see Sean's gun on the far side of the belt. Sean wasn't even running after me, he was just waiting patiently for the belt to deliver him the weapon. The control room prevented me from just running across to it. It was a shorter distance to run along the belt toward Sean, but I didn't want to risk it. I might be able to best him again, but I didn't like my chances, especially with the gun trundling toward him.

I would just have to run the long way around the belt and somehow avoid all the machines over it. I didn't know exactly what each of them was for, but I was sure they were supposed to pulverise or separate or do other violent things to whatever was on the belt.

As the first machine approached I timed the jump and just made it, running across the top of it and jumping back down to the belt on the other side. As I successfully avoided the second, I noticed something glinting on the floor beside it and jumped down to the concrete, thinking it was probably the Slave Stone.

When I crouched down there, though, I realised it was the other gun. I looked up and back towards Sean to make sure he couldn't see me, and then picked it up off the floor. Releasing the magazine to check it, I just confirmed what I already knew – it was empty. Despite that, I tucked it in my holster.

The Slave Stone was only a short distance away from the gun. It lay on the floor under the conveyer belt, radiating that awful aura. God knows what would have happened if Sam hadn't been there to 'direct' me not to listen to Diane. It was chilling. Poor Old Johnson was stuck somewhere in limbo like I'd been, unable to act for himself. At least we had some idea how to break him out of it, now.

I couldn't let Diane charge another stone, though. These things shouldn't exist. I crawled across the floor and scooped it up with the fabric of my daypack before climbing back onto the conveyer belt.

I'd lost ground when I'd jumped down to the floor, but I was still moving much faster than the belt was and at the rate I was travelling I was going to make it around to the gun before it was delivered to Sean. He quickly realised that and gave up just waiting. Rolling up his shirt sleeves, he climbed up onto the belt running against it toward the gun.

Before I managed to reach it, the gun was carried inside the hood of the last machine between Sean and I. I had no idea what the machine actually did – and neither did Sean, by the look of it – but I knew both Sam and I were dead if the gun made it out the other side. Hoping there wasn't blades or rollers or something else awful waiting for me, I ducked down and let myself be carried into the machine. I reached out in the darkness, feeling around the textured rubber until my fingers brushed against cool steel. I stretched further and wrapped them around the barrel of the loaded gun.

As I did, I felt several firm jets of water spray me, moving rapidly as they did so. It reminded me of a car wash. For the brief millisecond I opened my eyes, I could see Sean's legs jump out of the way at the mouth of them machine. There was no way I could crawl fast enough to go back the way I'd come. I wouldn't be able to shoot Sean from this angle, either, and especially not with water in my eyes. He'd be ready to disable me when I emerged, though.

I held the loaded gun in my hand. It was useless to me if I was dazed or unconscious. Under my arm, I felt the bird spirit flutter against my ribs. It was under the holster.

I drew the empty gun and held one in either hand – I couldn't open my eyes from the water to check, but the guns felt identical. Of course they were, I thought, the one I'd been using was his spare. I couldn't tell them apart unless I checked, and he probably wouldn't be able to, either. At least, I hoped he wouldn't. I tucked the loaded gun in the back of my belt under my t-shirt, and held the empty gun in my hands. God, I hoped this would work.

Just as I'd predicted, as I emerged from the machine and scrambled to stand, Sean's foot connected with the side of my head. He wasn't holding back and, stunned, I took a step backwards to try and prevent myself from being knocked over. It was the edge of the belt and my feet just dropped out from underneath me.

I feel very solidly against the ground, winded. I lay supine on the concrete, staring up at the walkways above the factory floor spinning above me until I was finally able to draw a breath.

"Lara!" Sam shrieked rushing up to the glass of the control panel. She hadn't seen me switch the guns, either. By her expression, I knew Sean retrieved the one I'd been holding as I fell. She looked around her, and I saw her climb up onto the belt to try to come to my rescue.

As I was watching her, Sean stepped in front of my line of sight just a _little_ too far away for me to kick his legs out. He had the gun pointed at my head.

I panicked, but as all my senses returned I felt metal jutting into my lower back.

"You don't really want to kill me," I told him.

He shrugged. "Nope," he said, and again I was surprised by how pleasant he sounded. "But when you run a billion dollar corporation you often have to do lots of things you don't really want to do." He shifted his weight. "Diane wants you alive for strategic purposes. I had my own ideas, but I don't think things are going to quite work out the way I planned," he said. "If I let you live, I have a feeling it will come back to bite me. My sister can just find some other less dangerous celebrity to be her cheerleader."

He didn't even say anything else, he just squeezed the trigger. I flinched.

The gun clicked harmlessly. Sean swore, checking the chamber. Just him taking his eyes off me for a fraction of a second was long enough for me to roll over and draw the loaded gun from my belt, holding it at him as I stood up. My head was still spinning, but I tried to ignore it.

His jaw fell. "Fuck!" he said, and leapt toward me, hoping to catch me off guard by attacking me quickly.

He didn't, and I pulled the trigger, too. My gun actually fired and the impact caused him to stagger. He didn't fall though, not straight away. Instead, he half-stood, clutching weakly at where I'd shot him. There was blood seeping into his white shirt between his fingers, but I didn't think it was the blood loss that was going to be an issue for him. He was struggling to breathe. He pressed the hole firmly. "Fuck you," he said, wheezing. "And fuck my fucking sister for this shit. I have _children_."

"Then I hope they never find out what sort of man you were," I said as he collapsed.


	22. Chapter 22

If I hadn't been acutely aware of just how much I needed to ration my bullets, I would have shot Sean Frost again as he lay unconscious at my feet. I was staring down at him, a little out of it because of what had just happened, when something hit me solidly from behind.

Luckily from Sam, she was shrieking. If she hadn't been and I hadn't known it was her throwing her arms around me… Well, I was so wired that I don't know what I would have done. I stood there frozen while she hugged me.

"Oh, my God!" she was repeating. "Oh, my God! I seriously thought that was it for you!"

I'd spent quite a lot of my time recently thinking that exact thought. I nodded; I was a little breathless. "It would have been," I said, "if I hadn't switched the guns."

She exhaled at length and then chuckled into my shoulder. "I just should stop worrying…" She stepped a little back from me and then touched my cheek with the back of her knuckles, still looking surprised and elated that I was alive. "Fuck," she said finally. "Okay, one down, one to go. She's got a big head start, too."

"Right," I said, nodding firmly and trying to sort my head out. I gave Sean what I had expected to be a final glance when I noticed something rectangular in his back pocket. I holstered my gun and bent down, slipping my hand inside. My fingers couldn't have closed around anything that was likely to give me more relief. "A spare magazine," I said, standing it up and showing Sam. "And it's fully loaded!"

I was going to tuck it into my own pocket, but I spotted the empty gun Sean had dropped just a few feet away on the floor. Roth had always carried matching guns. I think it was the comfort of that memory that made me eject the empty mag from that gun and slot in the fresh one. It would probably be safer not to be switching mags around in combat, anyway.

Sam had been lost in thought while I was messing about with ammo, her camera idly pointed at me while she stood with her head tilted. "That's why they drilled down to the cave," Sam said at last, having a light bulb moment. "That's where those weird Slave Stones are created."

"And she's on her way there now to make another one," I said. "Until we stop her." I cocked the pistol and looked at Sam.

Sam looked from the gun to my face. "You are totally badass," she said. "Let's never be enemies."

I laughed, wedging the second pistol into my belt. My skin and clothes were still damp and it felt quite secure. "As if that would ever happen. Let's go!"

The way that Diane had exited the building had been on the opposite side we'd entered. We had to walk past a whole stack of storage rooms, and as we were moving down the corridor I smelt diesel again.

I stopped. "Can you smell that?" I asked Sam.

She shrugged. "It's just exhaust from those machines, isn't it?"

I wasn't convinced. I looked around us. "There were pipes taking most of that stuff outside. It shouldn't have come down this far." There was a double-door near us in the wide corridor and it was locked. At least, it was locked until I stuck the axe into it and pried it open. I motioned for Sam to come in with the forward light.

She shone it around, and it landed on sack after sack of white hessian sacks, piled on top of each other. All the bags had very clear letting on them that read ' _ANFO_ ' and had the little orange hazard symbol with an explosion in it. Each bag was apparently twenty kilos, and there had to be forty, maybe fifty bags in this room. They were all pre-mixed and the room _stank_ of diesel.

Sam made a disgusted noise. "Someone's doused these in gas!"

I shook my head. "That's how they always smell," I said. "The 'FO' in ANFO stands for 'fuel oil'." I looked across them, thinking. "There's probably detonators in another room. You'd never store them together."

Sam filmed along the bags. "We could just blow this place up," she said.

I laughed once. "If I ignited all this we'd take out all the way to Derby," I said. "And I'm pretty sure that's not really what Macca had in mind when it comes to protecting historic and cultural locations." I bent down and tested the weight of one of the bags. Twenty kilos would probably break my daypack. Ten might work, though, and if I could squish it in. Perhaps I could collapse all the entrances to the cave and buy us some time. "Here, help me empty out some of this."

Sam looked alarmed. "Don't you have to be careful with it?"

I looked down at the slurry. "No," I said. "It's harmless without a detonator and an explosive booster." I got Sam to help me tip the bag, and then tied up the rest very tightly and jammed it into my daypack. The straps pulled uncomfortably on my shoulders, but they would probably hold.

The detonating equipment was in another out of the rooms; we had to search through them to find the right one. I took what we needed, reappropriating a det cord bag and giving it to Sam to carry. We'd have to use it quickly in this weather; ANFO began to degrade as soon as it got wet.

When we were back in the corridor, I heard some commotion from back down in the main processing facility. Someone was yelling, "Shit, is that Sean Frost?" There was shouting and another voice called, "Fuck him, he's not worth a hundred kay! They're obviously around here somewhere, look for them!"

As I was looking back down the corridor, I locked eyes with a man. He didn't say anything for a moment, and I knew he was trying to decide whether or not he wanted to split a hundred thousand with the other men that were with him. While he was just standing there staring at us, I raised the gun and shot him in the head. The noise echoed off the walls of the corridor, but fortunately with the silencer it just sounded like a thick text book slapping against the linoleum. No one came to assist him.

"Quick, let's get out of here!" I said to Sam, pushing her towards the door before someone else saw us.

When we reached the exit, we discovered the reason the corridor was so wide was because it was meant to allow small vehicles to travel down it. The door looked similar to one on a domestic garage and we only had to open it a little to crawl out of the crack underneath.

Outside, the rain was easing up a little. It felt less like some sort of apocalypse and more like the rain I was used to back home. The thunder clouds were obviously moving away because it was also beginning to lighten. There were fewer men in the yard than there had been before, too. The ones who were still there looked a fair bit tougher than some of the others we'd been up against, and most of them were holding makeshift weapons. Clearly the word had got out that we were armed and dangerous.

Across the other side of the yard and a little further up the road was the shaft we'd emerged from, and that's where I figured we had to go. While I was trying to figure out how best to get there, the pigeon spirit landed innocuously on a railing near the edge of the building. Sam and I both looked over at it, but she kept the camera pointing forward. The pigeon walked a few steps along the railing and cocked its head.

"Spirit GPS says turn right," Sam observed.

I looked at the mine shaft in the distance, the opposite way to the direction the pigeon was trying to get us to go in. "Well, it can recalculate its route," I said. "I'm not too keen on the idea of going to long way around and then falling through another roof."

Sam looked skeptical. "We can't just unplug this one, though," she said but then followed me as I made a dash between buildings. We made it across the yard without being seen, but as we were passing the last building, we collided with two security guard rounding the corner.

I shot them both immediately. One of them I got in the head and he dropped like a rock. I'm not sure where I shot the other one, but he didn't fall. He reached for his radio and put it to his mouth. " _Ops Four down, Ops Four do—_!" he shouted. Since I was so close to him, I just swung the axe into the side of his head. That shut him up.

The radio was buzzing. The signal wasn't clear at all, possibly because of the weather. " _Control. Repeat, Ops Four_?"

I bent down and picked up the radio from the ground at my feet. "Want another one?" I asked Sam.

She accepted it from me. "Sure, why not. I'll start a collection." There was no need to respond to the transmission because everyone knew we were on the loose, but Sam did, anyway. "Hi, guys," she said into the mic. "I'd like to introduce your new Ops Four. My name's Sam, and my partner's Lara. The old Ops Four is kind of suffering from…" she looked down at them. One of them was still making haphazard movements despite missing half his skull. She looked horrified, and made a disgusted noise. " _Really_ confronting head injuries. Oh, my God. I hope he was one of the criminals."

The radio was silent for a moment, and then the Control said, " _Shit._ "

Sam snorted and turned the radio off, slotting it on her belt beside the other.

I gave her a look. The pigeon spirit landed beside us on the fence. I ignored it. "Come on!"

The mouth of the shaft was still, and there was one of those golf-buggy things parked beside it. None of the guards who'd originally been there were anywhere to be found. Inside, though, I could hear echoes of people talking. There was a woman's voice, and… something else. Another sound I couldn't really determine.

Fortunately, without the power on, the shaft was _really_ dark inside. We crept into it.

As we got closer to the talking, it _knew_ it was Diane. I stopped and peeked around the corner. She was standing the centre of one of the shafts, looking aggravated. There were a series of guards standing around her, scratching their heads. I counted six. They were all spread out in the shaft and I quickly realised I wouldn't be able to shoot them all before one of them made it over to us. I didn't want to attempt it, anyway; my judgment was too clouded by how much I wanted to give Diane really confronting head injuries.

I didn't understand why they were all standing there, though, flashing their torches around as if Diane _wasn't_ in a rush to get to the cave.

Diane herself was talking on a satellite phone. "I said _no_ , Cadence!" she said into the receiver, still using her professional voice. "I'm not concerned what condition you found him in, we're not calling them. We have medics here who are both highly trained professionals. When the weather clears up, _then_ we'll take him to Broome." She had her jaw set as she was listening to someone on the other end of the phone. In the end she interrupted them. " _Who's_ his medical proxy? That doesn't make sense, I'm his sis—Cadence? Cadence?" She looked at the phone and then her face hardened. She didn't say anything to the guards about what happened, though. Instead, she turned her back to us, giving me a good view of her delicate neck. I had one of my hands on the holstered gun, and it tingled as I looked at where her jugular would be.

I realised all the guards kept looking down the shaft, and I couldn't figure out what was going on. Why had they stopped here?

"Remind me of what timeframe they advised?" Diane asked one of the guards. He shrugged, and she crossed her arms. "I have some tight deadlines on this one," she said. "I'd appreciate if you could tell them to hurry." The guarded nodded and hopped on the radio.

At that point, the green strips on the floor beside where Sam and I were crouching faded. Above us there was a very pronounced buzzing noise. Sam and I looked at each other, and then up at the lights. They flickered on.

At that point I was able to see why Diane and the guards were just standing there: the mining shaft and flooded and they weren't able to get past the water. Diane must have been waiting for some sort of equipment that would assist her.

Unfortunately, now the lights were on, not only could _we_ see what they were looking at, we discovered we weren't as hidden as we thought. No sooner had one of the guards who'd been wandering around turned to face us, he saw us. He also saw my guns, and swallowed. He knew if he said anything, I'd try to shoot him.

"Hey! It's them!" Another voice shouted from beside Diane.

She spun around and I made eye-contact with her for a fraction of a second. _Raise the gun_ , part of me was saying. _Raise it, point it at her and shoot her._ I seriously considered listening to it this time, but in the two seconds it would take line up the shot enough to land a fatal bullet, the guards would be on us. Sam was already pulling on my arm, anyway. " _Run!_ "

In the confusion, one of the guards managed to grab the strap of my daypack. I swung backwards with my axe as I tried to take off after Sam. I'm not sure where I got him, but he yelled and let go. I pelted as fast as I could with the ten kilos smacking against my back up to the mouth of the shaft.

The buggy was still parked there. Sam got straight into the driver's seat and turned it on. I put a boot on the passenger side, turning and firing a shot or two back at the men following us. When they saw me aiming at them, they all dropped to the floor. The gradient was steep enough for me to not be able to shoot any of them. That wasn't any real concern; I didn't want to waste my bullets, anyway.

As Sam pulled away from the mining shaft, I stepped up with my other leg and sat beside her. No sooner had I sat down, Sam drove the buggy straight into a pothole and I was nearly ejected right out again. "Remind me why _you're_ driving?" I asked her.

"I thought it was a puddle!" she said. "Besides, I couldn't aim a gun to save myself. Like, literally. And something tells me one of us is going to need to be doing that in a second." I could see what she meant. Ahead of us, some of the tough-looking miners had spotted the buggy roaring up the main access road.

I sighed and made sure I was sitting in a position that meant I could easily draw the second gun if I needed to. "I don't know how long it's going to take Diane to get through that water," I said. "But probably not long enough if we have too much trouble here."

Sam at least swerved around another large puddle. "They probably have some 'Industrial Shaft Emptier' or 'De-Watering Mine Hose' or whatever diesel-powered junk is able to empty water out of a mine _and_ efficiently destroy the environment," she said. "I guess that means we'll go the other way around to the cave?"

I nodded. "Just take the road out of here. We can get to the cave from along the gorge." I paused. "Also if you could try not to crash this thing and kill us, that would be brilliant."

"Hey, I drive all the time and I haven't killed you yet," she said indignantly.

"Yes," I said darkly. "Yet."

The road was some distance away from the main yard, but the men who wanted their hundred grand were covering it much faster than I would otherwise have expected them to. I had to keep in mind I only had eighteen or nineteen bullets left, and I'd need to be very selective about which men I chose to shoot. I also didn't like my chances of being too good a shot when I was a passenger on such a bumpy ride.

I ignored most of the groups and only fired shots at two guys who were trying to head us off near the reception centre. I fired three shots and only one of them connected, somewhere in one of the miner's torsos. Just like the guard, though, he didn't drop straight away. He hardly even slowed even though I could see his t-shirt staining a deep red. I took out my axe and as we past him, I ducked out of the way of a nail-studded baseball bat and smacked the axe heavily on a hand that had grabbed one of the seats.

The buggy was unfortunately really light, and having a heavy man grab it turned it off course and it nearly slammed into the wall of the reception centre. Sam stopped it just in time for me to fall out, sweep the axe under the feet of the man who'd wrenched us off the road, and shoot him dead in the centre of his chest. The miner with the shot torso staggered over to me. He looked rather defeated already. When he saw I had the gun aimed right at his chest, he just stopped. "My ex-wife used to parrot on about karma and all that spiritual bullshit. I used to think it was a crock," he said. "But everything's gone to shit for me since I killed her."

I just stared at him. Was he serious?

"Can you at least make it quick?" he said, squinting and waiting for me to shoot him.

"No," I said, and shot him in the groin. "Guess your ex-wife was right, after all."

There were several other groups of men running towards us. As he fell, I pushed myself up and climbed back into the buggy as Sam attempted to reverse it away from the wall and back onto the road. She slammed her foot into the accelerator just in time for us to not be caught by another group of men. I looked back over my shoulder at them, releasing a breath. We'd probably make it out of the mine, now.

Sam glanced at me. "You're bleeding," she commented, but didn't sound particularly concerned. "Are you okay?"

I looked down at my arms. They were grazed, but I wouldn't have described either of them as bleeding. As I had my head tilted down, though, a drop of blood fell from my face onto my t-shirt. I put my fingers to my nose. Touching it hurt. "Wow, I didn't even notice I'd been hit in the face," I said, and pinched the bridge of it. It didn't feel broken, but it _was_ sore. I was going to have a charming swollen and blue nose for a few days.

As we passed the tarmac and headed out onto the public road, there was some commotion behind us, and I saw a pair of headlights. The rain had eased up and the clouds were clearing to the point where they weren't needed, so just turning them on was clearly just aggressive. "We have company coming," I told Sam glumly, turning in my seat to watch the approaching vehicle.

As the four wheel drive drew up behind us, an arm appearing outside the window and threw something at Sam. I pushed her down and the vehicle swerved and nearly ejected us out at sixty kilometres an hour. When the car went to ram us, I guessed where the driver's head would be and shot. I didn't get him, but the windscreen shattered. There were at least six men in the car.

Sam was watching them in the rear view. "Don't they know it's not safe to travel without seatbelts?" she asked neutrally.

I shot the driver and the car veered off the road straight into a huge anthill. Two of the passengers were thrown forwards out of the car. "Exactly," I said. "You never know when someone's going to shoot the driver."

There was a Y in the road. Both the roads were dirt, but one of the arms was newer, flatter and clearly recently travelled on. Sam drove up that one. "That must be the old road," I said, looking down it. "Maybe it wasn't wide enough for all the lorries and mining equipment."

It took us probably about five minutes to arrive at the bridge that Sam predicted. It was _huge_ – easily six full lanes across – and made of thick concrete. Four strong supports extended into the river bed from underneath it. A section of the rocky gorge had been cut to allow it to pass through.

The pigeon spirit was perched in the centre of the bridge. "Stop here for a second," I told Sam, stepping out of the buggy and walking over to it. It flew away as I approached. I looked over the edge where it had been waiting; this section of the gorge was much narrower than the part near the blockade. As a result, the water was white-tipped as it rushed pasted underneath. The rain had made the level much higher, and it came at least halfway up the supports. I looked up the gorge, it was even narrower still further up, and I could see the old wooden bridge in the distance.

I turned to look back toward the mine. I couldn't see it from the bridge because the rest of the gorge was blocking the view. I was sure there would be people who tried to follow us, though. Probably a lot more, and I only had maybe sixteen bullets left. If I was going to do anything to the bridge, I'd need to do it quickly.

I wouldn't need ten kilos of ANFO to seal the cave, I didn't think. I probably wouldn't even need two. "I'm going to take out the bridge so no one can get in or out of the mine," I told Sam, swinging off my backpack and taking out the half-emptied sack.

"Good idea," she said, and reached behind her in the driver's seat to hand me the bag that had the detonators in it.

I stood back and looked at the bridge. It was incredibly wide across. I supposed I could lay the ANFO across the centre of it and just blow a few holes in it, but with the supports underneath it I didn't think that would work so well. I wasn't even sure it would do anything more than just crack the concrete. Maybe if I had a couple of bags of ANFO that would work, but I needed to think strategically about how I used what I had.

The pigeon had landed on the railing beside me, again. When I looked at it, it flew under the bridge. I leaned over the edge, and the first thing I saw was an enormous circular support. It had rings around it, and I realised that was probably because it was made of slabs of concrete piled on top of each other. I had no doubt there would be something metal pinning them together in the middle, but if I could blow a couple of the slabs out from even two of the supports, that would destabilise the bridge.

"Drive back to this side," I told Sam, pointing to the side the mine was on, and she did. She even did a three-point turn without scratching the buggy, and she only needed six full lanes to do it in.

I tore the plastic bag that had been holding the detonators in half, and poured a good two or three kilos of ANFO into either half of it. Then, I tied them up and hung them from my belt. It dug into my hips as a result, but I could weather it. I shoved two sticks of dynamite and the explosive boosters into one of the pockets of my cargos and hung the det cord from the other side of my belt. Everything else, I gave to Sam on the other side of the bridge. Tying a length of rope to the axe, I wedged it in between two bars of the railing and lowered myself over the side of it against the first support. The supports had metal steps poking out of them for maintenance purposes, so I tied the ANFO bag into one and then dropped the boosters in. I climbed back up the rope with a length of det cord and tied it to the bridge for now. I repeated the process for the other support.

Taking the two lengths of det cord carefully over to where Sam was standing with the buggy, I fixed the blaster cap on the end of the cords. Sam filmed the whole process, looking very interested. "If I'd've known archaeologists learnt this stuff, maybe I'd have taken some of the classes with you," she said.

"Just theory," I said. "If we need to blow things up on digs, we get engineers in. Roth just used to like to blow things up when he was younger. He and Grim were always on about what they did when they were teenagers." I placed the cap on the ground and stood up. "Stand back," I told her, and she did. I took out the gun and aimed at it, shooting just once.

Immediately, a cloud of dust shot out from one side of the bridge. The bridge groaned and began to very slowly twist, leaning down toward the side where I'd blasted the supports. Long cracks formed into the surface, and a chunk or two of concrete fell out. It didn't actually collapse – at least, not yet. No one in their right mind would drive vehicles or machinery across it, though.

I made a thoughtful noise. "I suppose that will have to do," I said, and holstered the gun. "We probably don't have much time. Do you think this thing can drive on sand?" I looked at the wheels. They seemed thick enough. "Let's follow the gorge until we get to the path that leads to the cave."

As it turned out, the rain had made the sand firmer and easier to drive on. While Sam was trying to navigate it, I took out Macca's satellite phone and tabbed through the contacts. Amanda had put her name in the phone as 'Amanda Evert'. I made a mental note of that, and selected _call_. I put the phone to my ear as it rang.

The line was silent when she answered it; that was smart of her. "Amanda?" I asked.

She exhaled. "What took you so long?" she asked. "Macca's worrying so much about you two that he practically needs a paper bag to breathe into. It's annoying."

At that point Macca grabbed the phone off her for a moment and yelled into it, "The blood's still _inside_ you guys, right? And you're not walking zombies?"

"We're fine," I told him. As I said it, Sam hit something on the ground that nearly flipped the buggy. I shouted with surprise, grabbing onto the seat. The buggy stayed upright. "Of course, Sam's driving so I don't know how long that will be the case." Macca and I both chuckled, and Sam gave me a dirty look. I sobered. "We're not finished yet. I need you guys to get to Fitzroy Crossing. Somewhere near there the Frosts have asked their cronies to dump Old Johnson. He's not in great shape."

There was some scuffling over the line, and I could hear Amanda and Macca arguing about the phone. In the end Amanda won.

She was silent for a moment. "Do you have the stone?"

"Yeah," I said. "Right now we're trying to make sure Diane Frost doesn't make any more."

"You should watch her do it before you kill her," Amanda suggested. "At least then we'd know for sure how to make them."

I snorted. "And have another one of these awful things in circulation? No, thank you!" We were already approaching the path; I hadn't realised it was quite so close to the bridge. It must literally just have been on the other end of the gorge where Old Johnson had been playing. "I'm not sure anyone ever needs that kind of knowledge. Even for academic purposes. Anyway, tell the boys to drive to Fitzroy Crossing, okay?" I hung up as Sam pulled up at the foot of the path upward.

We left the buggy and made the climb to the cave entrance. The pigeon spirit was waiting for us at the crest, but it didn't fly down into the cave. I stopped Sam and we watched it walk at a leisurely pace to the edge of the gorge. Then, it launching off the cliff face and disappeared.

"That thing…" I said, lifting my t-shirt and looking down at the design on my stomach. "No, Bird," I told it firmly. "I'm not jumping off a bloody cliff."

The cave smelt funny this time when we entered, musty and damp. Some of the surfaces we had to climb down were slippery and at one point I found myself hanging off a ledge and unable to get up it again because of how slippery it was. In the process of getting the axe from my belt, I lost my grip and fell. Sam rushed over to the edge to help, but just slipped tumbled after me.

It wasn't very far, but I was falling back-first. I jammed my eyes shut to brace for the impact, but when it came I just found myself quickly enveloped with water. I struggled to point myself upwards, and my boots brushed against the cave floor. Just as I stood up, Sam must have landed beside me because I was splashed with water and the forward light disappeared.

"Are you okay?" she asked me, ducking under the water and retrieving the camera.

"I was about to ask you the same thing!" I said, discovering the water was only waist-deep. "I'm— _shit_!" I remembered the contents of my bag. "The ANFO!" I swung my bag off my shoulders and opened it. To my dismay, even though I'd tried to tie off the ANFO bag as tightly as I could, I hadn't managed to make it water-tight. When I opened it, it sloshed with water. "Shit!" I repeated, and then exhaled roughly and put a hand to my forehead. "It will _never_ ignite now!"

Sam watched me. "I guess we can always just wait for Diane in the cave and then kill her when she arrives."

"I bet she'll have an enormous entourage of people with her," I said. "God, I should have just shot her in that mining shaft before. We might have been able to best six guards."

Still very frustrated with myself, I dragged my feet along the half-filled corridor to the entrance to the cave. As we entered, all the paintings began to glow. They were all on the ceiling; the floor of the cavern had filled with water. I could also hear it gushing from somewhere else inside.

I looked up at the paintings. "How are you guys involved in making Slave Stones, and how can I stop Diane from using you?" I asked them, as if they could reply.

Sam was careful not to point the camera upward, but keep it trained on me. "You can see the light from them on you," she said. "It's this really eerie yellow colour. Looks pretty cool."

I waded across the floor to the centre, and then over to where I knew the entrance to the shaft below was. Near it, I spotted water running down one of the internal walls. When I put my hand out to touch it, it sprayed me in the face. I scrunched my eyes closed and stepped away. The water was running really fast, why was that? "Sam, can you come over here a moment?" She followed me over. "Point the light up there," I said. When she did, I saw a crack in the rock. Not only was water running down the wall, but it was spraying outwards at one of the other walls quite an alarming rate. At least that explained why the paintings had retreated all the way up on the ceiling.

I looked down at the water we were standing it. It had been at our waist just a few minutes ago, but now it was up to the base of my ribs. "The cavern's filling with water!" I looked over at Sam. "We can't wait for Diane without air!"

Sam's brows had met and she looked uncertain. "Maybe that will mean Diane can't do whatever either?"

I swallowed. "Somehow I think Diane will figure something out," I said, and then waded back to the centre of the cavern. "God, what do we do?" We couldn't very well go back to the mine and wait for her to emerge again. We couldn't stay anywhere in that placed without eventually being found, and I only had a dozen or so bullets.

At that moment, the pigeon spirit landed on my shoulder. I heard Sam sigh as her camera cut out again. I turned my head to look at it. This close, every tiny detail about it suggested it was real. Except, of course, the fact that it was very placidly sitting on my shoulder and not panicking and flying away. Even when it flew off my shoulder, I could feel the effort of its feet pushing off my skin. I watched it travel across the room in the dim glow of the paintings. Having nothing to land on, it fluttered near the wall.

"What do you want me to do with the wall?" I asked it as I waded over to it.

"Maybe it wants you to beat your head against it," Sam suggested. I had to chuckle at that.

The pigeon had disappeared, and while I was trying to figure out where it had gone, I felt scrabbling at the back of my neck and tiny puffs of wind as wings beat behind my head. It was clawing at my bag, presumably because of the Slave Stone within it. I took it off and tossed it to Sam.

No sooner had a done so, the paintings began to travel down the wall to greet me. I watched them swirl around in front of me as the water lapped at my arm pits. God, it was rising so fast. We didn't have much time before we wouldn't be able to make it back down the corridor.

I looked back at the wall. There really was only one special thing about this cave: the paintings. The way Diane created the Slave Stones had to be something to do with them. I watched them, wondering how she did it. I didn't really have time to try and figure that out, though. I just had to stop her from being able to do it.

Perhaps there was a way… The pigeon was sort of helpful, and Amanda seemed well enough except for being rather thin, right? "Maybe I can't stop Diane from getting in here," I said to Sam. "But I think I can stop her from being able to use this place to make the stones."

I took a deep breath and reached out toward the wall. Sam was shouting something behind me, but I didn't pay any attention to it. As soon as I put my hand on one of the paintings, they all _rushed_ down the wall toward me. I could fell all sorts of things on my palm as they crawled onto me; scales, skin, more feathers and even the brush of a woman's long silky hair. I could feel them all bunching onto my skin, jostling with each other for the prime real estate in the darkness under my t-shirt and trousers. Inevitably, some of them ended up visible on my arms and weren't happy about it. I found that so amusing, but figured they _were_ cave paintings after all and probably preferred to be hidden.

Sam rushed over to me. "Lara, what are you _doing?_ "

I threw a hand up as she approached. "Don't touch me!" I told her, remembering what Amanda had said about them. "You'll get them on you!"

She squinted at me. "You make it sound like a disease!" she said and then pointed at my arms. "Look, they're everywhere!" I looked down at my skin. They _were_ everywhere, but at least they'd stopped glowing. I supposed until this whole affair was sorted out I was going to have to join Amanda in the Sun Smart club and wear very long sleeves.

I looked back up at the ceiling of the cavern. Without their light it was so dark in there that I couldn't even see it. I felt water on my chin. "Come on, let's get out of here before this place fills up!"

We had to rush down the corridor that led to the way out, and we made it nearly to the end before it was completely submerged. At least we were able to swim up to the slippery ledge that had caused us all that bother earlier and just stand on it. The water stopped following us once we'd reached above the water-level of the river, and we climbed the rest of the way out without needing to worry about drowning.

When I walked out of the mouth of the cave, the rain had completely stopped. It was still a little overcast, but I could see tiny patches of blue sky behind some of the clouds. I didn't really think too much about that, though, because the sky was absolutely _filled_ with birds of every conceivable variety. They circled around in morphing flocks, soared in straight lines, some of them even descended over the edge of the cliff down toward the water. I could hear all their calls, from shrieks to squawks to beautiful and melodic songs. I wandered over to the edge of the cliff and looked down at the water. Below us I could see crocodiles, barramundi, schools of tiny minnows all moving in the water. Mobs of kangaroos had stooped to drink at the river's swollen edges. Amongst the bushes I could see emus, bush quails… the list just went on and on. It was like I had wandered into a wildlife park during feeding hour.

"What are you looking at?" Sam asked me. She looked suspicious.

"God, all of this," I said, sweeping my arms out over the vista. "It's incredible, isn't it?"

She squinted at me. "It's a flooded river," she said.

I stared at her a moment, and then looked back toward everything. "You can't see it," I realised, and was suddenly aware of all of the paintings moving around on my skin.

"If you're talking about that pigeon thing, I can see _that_ ," she said, pointing toward the edge. I spotted it perched on the edge of the cliff once again. And again, it launched itself off the edge and descended down to the water where it disappeared.

"I don't know how to describe it," I told her. "I'm seeing… God, hundreds of animals. It's beautiful, and it all looks just so real."

"Well, maybe you can make some sort of spirit army out of them and use it to trash the mine," Sam suggested ironically.

That's right, I thought, watching crocodiles dragging their bodies out of the water into a small patch of sunlight. We need to do something about that mine. But what? Blowing it up seemed like the only thing we could do that would cause enough destruction for it to never be viable again. But that much destruction was exactly what we had been trying to prevent the Frosts from doing in the first place, before this Slave Stone business.

Even if spirits were able to destroy anything, I wasn't sure what this selection of them was likely to be able to do. They all looked so harmless. I watched the birds all, one by one, descend towards the water.

The flooded river wasn't running like it had been before. It was incredibly wide, covering the whole base of the gorge where the sand banks had been the night before. The water was moving in a circular pattern around the gorge instead of flowing through it.

It was odd, though. Why was the river not flowing, especially when it was so incredibly full?

The pigeon flew past my face and disappeared down to the far end of the gorge. There was… something down there. "Camera?" I asked Sam, who handed it to me. I zoomed in on the area the pigeon had flown to. It quickly stopped working, but showed me enough of an image for me to figure out what had happened.

The bridge had finally fallen onto its side, and by doing so had created a huge dam. The water lapped at the top of it. Six lanes high, that bridge had been, and the water covered it all. That much water was filling the whole gorge, all the way back to where we were. That was a _lot_ of water.

All I could think of was just how much damage that water would be able to do to anything in its path. The mine _was_ very close to the river.

The pigeon appeared beside me once again. I watched it fly off the edge of the cliff just as it had done several times before. I looked down into the slowly swirling, deep water. It was a safe jump.

"I'm going to jump into it," I told Sam, taking off my heavy daypack.

" _What_?" she asked me. "I mean, I know you're seeing things I'm not. But you're also not making any sense."

I realised I hadn't explained anything to her. "The bridge collapsed on its side up there," I gestured toward it, "and it's created dam of this water here. If I break the dam, all this water will go rushing down that narrow gorge and a great deal of it is going to end up flooding the mine." I made sure all my pockets were buttoned up. "And the quickest way to the bridge is by jumping straight in," I said. "And the pigeon has been rather helpful so far, so I've decided to take its directions this time."

She looked worried. "Okay," she said simply. I could tell she wanted to tell me not to, but she didn't say anything to try and discourage me. I gave the camera back to her, but she just turned it off. I looked quizzically at her. "I guess whatever you can see prevents it from recording," she said.

Once I was ready, I just stood on the edge and looked at her. "Wish me luck," I said. "Just stay here, I'll come back."

"Don't die," Sam said firmly, "or I'll kill you." She looked like she wanted to hug me, but her eyes were on the paintings all still trying to get under the sleeves of my t-shirt.

I laughed. Beside me, the pigeon flew off the edge. This time as it did, I turned and jumped off the edge of the cliff with it, circling my arms in the air to stay upright.

No sooner had I left the cliff than I was _surrounded_ by birds. I felt their feathers rush past me in the air and it didn't stop under I hit the surface of the water with the heel of my boots. Even in the water I could feel things moving around me. Smooth scales drew along my skin and curled around me. The minnows tickled my face as I felt something huge and solid connect with my feet and push me to the surface.

My palm touched something rough. I looked over at it and saw the back of an adult freshwater crocodile. When it took off through the water, I instinctively grabbed a hold of it and it towed me across the gorge. Around me, the smooth backs of freshwater dolphins peeked out of the water as they swam with us.

When the crocodile dived back down under the water so I had to let go, I drifted a short distance forward and my hand touched concrete. I looked up; I'd come to the bridge. The pigeon was perched on the railing, waiting patiently for me. I climbed out onto the railing, and immediately lost my breath.

Between the rungs I was standing on was a steep drop down to solid and dry riverbed. If I fell, it would definitely be fatal. Just the anxiety of knowing that nearly made me slip off.

I looked back over the other side of the bridge – literally a sea of water was trapped there, splashing up around the edges of the concrete. The bridge was groaning.

If I hadn't ruined the ANFO, it would have been so easy for me to just blast the centre of the bridge open. The water was already pushing on it, I would hardly have needed to use any at all to get the water to break through the bridge. Now, all I had were my guns. I might be able to shoot enough to cause a crack in the bridge; that was _if_ I had enough bullets.

Not from this angle, though. I looked over the edge at the dry riverbed below. I would probably need to stand down there to do it. I tied rope to the axe and hung it over the railing, lowering myself as far down as the rope went and then letting myself fall the rest of the distance. I landed heavily, but I didn't break anything.

The next problem was that I couldn't find anywhere safe to stand, and without the axe I couldn't climb very far up the side of the gorge. I climbed as far as I could anyway, and took out the gun. There were only a couple of bullets left in the first gun so I fired them at the centre of the bridge. Then, I holstered that one and took out the second gun and emptied the whole magazine directly into the concrete, too. I could see it causing holes and cracks in the surface, but didn't appear to cause any structural damage.

I exhaled, and dropped down to the river bed. At least I could attempt to get my axe back before I figured out what on earth I should do next. I looked around for a stone from the river bed to throw at it to knock it down.

As I bent down to the sand, the bridge groaned. Several chunks of concrete popped out of it.

I stood, turning slowly to look up at it. As I did, I watched a long, thick crack travel from the site of one of my shells up to the top of the bridge and the lapping water. The whole thing shook.

My blood ran cold. I knew what came next.

I turned and began to run away from the dam up the river bed, hoping to find somewhere I could climb up or run away before the dam collapsed. Behind me, I could hear concrete falling out and then a sharp crack. Over my shoulder, a sea of water _poured_ through the broken bridge, tearing the rest of it apart and rushing down the gorge toward me.

There really was no point in running, I knew I could never escape the deluge. I tried, anyway, right up under the point that it engulfed me.

It was a familiar feeling, being dragged along the sand of river beds, being tossed and tumbled and spun like I was in a huge washing machine. I couldn't scream, because if I opened my mouth water would come rushing inside. My heart was pounding and I was desperate to breathe, but I couldn't.

I jammed my mouth and my eyes shut, reaching out with my hands as I was dragged through the raging current. The surface was nowhere to be found.

Just when my lungs burned to draw a breath and when I thought at any moment I would accidentally inhale a big mouthful of water, I felt that rough skin on my palm. I grabbed onto it but I couldn't tell if it was pulling me or not.

I was so surprised to feel the wind on my face that I was almost frightened to draw a breath— given the choice I may not have, except I was desperate for air. I gasped, flapping around in the water as several rough bodies swum around my arms and my wrists, keeping me at the surface.

I was still being pushed along with the river as the mouth of it ate through the air, pushing a section of the bridge ahead of it. It swung around the river bends, turning, twisting, pouring forward as the gorge became narrower and narrower.

Eventually, ahead of us the gorge thinned to a point where I realised the section of bridge ahead of us wouldn't fit through. I didn't have any time to react. The huge slab of concrete jammed fast into it, and I was thrown over the top of it and through the air.

There was water in this part of the river – thank goodness – and I flew over the old wooden bridge and landed heavily on my side in the water. Once I was still, I struggled frantically on the old bridge to get out. I was pushed over a few times because the concrete wasn't blocking the water completely, but eventually managed to make it to a cut section of the gorge.

I looked down at the ground: the old road. I ran along it to the side of the gorge and scrambled up the rock face, above the level I thought the water would get to.

The concrete bridge fragment scraped along either side of the gorge, pushed by the water, until it reached the cut section. With another route to escape the gorge, the water _rushed_ out of the gap in the rock, surging along the old road towards the mine.

I looked down at the solid mass of water rushing through the cut in the rock. It reminded me of the dark green body of a slithering snake, and as my eyes followed its path out towards the mine, my breath caught in my throat. The sun was beginning to come out, and a rainbow had formed over the mine site.

Every myth is based on an element of the truth. "The rainbow serpent," I whispered, watching the flood water completely engulf the mine.


	23. Chapter 23

The water had initially covered most of the buildings in the mine. As it drained into the maze of shafts underneath the site, it left behind a mass of tangled debris. Everything was just so completely destroyed that you couldn't even tell where any of the structures had originally been. A few people had managed to escape and had climbed up the incline beside the mine. The rest… well. I looked at the wreckage. Search and Rescue would be picking through _that_ for days. I almost wanted to stay and watch so I could experience the moment where they found Diane's body.

It didn't take Sam that long to find me. When she came running up the side of the gorge shouting, "Lara!" I was sore and exhausted and just wanted to throw my arms around her. Even though most of the paintings had actually managed to fit themselves under my t-shirt, I was still wary of transferring any of them to her and didn't let her hug me. I was just so glad to see her, though.

We stood tensely in front of each other, with Sam looking down at my arms. "Can you hurry up and get rid of those?" she asked. "I really want to touch you."

I completely agreed with her, especially with her transparent t-shirt clinging to her bra like it was. "I'm sure Amanda will know how," I said, and then stoped myself from staring at her by looking out towards the mine.

Sam gestured at her camera. "Can I film it, you think? Or are there…" She gestured up at the sky where I had seen the hundreds of birds from Windjana Gorge.

I looked up – there were a couple of birds, but I supposed they were probably real. "I think it's fine," I said. "They're all gone for now."

We watched the scene in front of us for a few minutes. Sam panned over it all. When she was done, she turned the camera on my face. "And this is our heroine," she said, "by the way her nose isn't normally that colour."

"Give me that," I said, and pulled the camera off her, reviewing the footage. My nose _was_ a sort of blue-purple colour, and my lip was split. I never had any idea what was going on with my body until a day or two later when everything just _hurt._ I touched it and winced.

"Should we call Macca and the other guys?" Sam said. "They can pick us up on the way to Fitzroy Crossing."

I shook my head, giving the camera back to Sam. "No, they'd have to get off the highway to do it. I'd much rather they just go rescue Old Johnson and we make our own way back."

Sam frowned. "So what are we going to do, _walk_ there?"

I grinned at her.

When we got back to the gorge, the buggy was still parked at the base of the path. This time, _I_ climbed into the driver's seat. Sam gave me a look. "Oh, come on," she said. "I'm seriously not _that_ bad a driver. It's not like I drive around killing people!"

I smirked at her. "Hop in!" I patted the seat beside me and she climbed into it, managing to film me without the camera cutting out.

The wooden bridge on the old road was still in good enough shape for us to drive the buggy across it, and only a few hundred metres after it, it joined up with the original road. There was an old sign that had 'Derby' on one side and 'Fitzroy Crossing' on the other. It looked like it had been there for decades and probably needed replacing. We turned towards Fitzroy Crossing.

I knew golf buggies had a very limited range before they ran out of power, and up until the last part of our journey where the dirt road fed onto the sealed highway, I had been absolutely certain that at any second the cart would die. In fact, it was still going strong when we started to see houses peppering the landscape and even as we crossed the bridge that led into the township.

As we pulled into civilisation again, there were a series of helicopters circling above the houses and heading west. They were bright orange and had the letters _SES_ on them. "I suppose someone finally called the authorities," I said to Sam as she filmed them disappearing on the horizon.

Fitzroy Crossing was a rather weary town, and even more so after the storm. A few of the roads and some of the houses were flooded. Bare-footed people were sweeping silt and water from their porches and staring at us as we trundled past in the buggy. Everyone in the town appeared to be Aboriginal, and I felt as though we stuck out like sore thumbs. It wasn't until I happened to look down my body and spot my guns that I realised the fact I stood out had nothing to do with my race. I took off the holster and squished the both inside my daypack.

It was a relief to see Macca's old people mover in the car park of the tiny district hospital. We parked the buggy beside it, stretching our legs and then walking inside. As we approached the reception desk, I pulled absently at my sleeves in case any of the paintings were still peeking out. If they were, the lady didn't notice them, and she didn't even really need to look up at us. "They're in room eleven," she said, still doing paperwork. "Keep your voices down."

As if she'd never said that, a man shouted from further up the corridor. "Lara! Sam!" It was Macca, I could see his dreadlocks poking from a doorway. When he saw us, he came bounding down the corridor with the enthusiasm of a Labrador. He was going to hug both of us, but I jumped back from him and put my arms up. "Don't!" I said, making the receptionist look up with surprise.

I waved dismissively at her, and then lifted my t-shirt ever so slightly to show him a tangled mess of painted lines. He raised his eyebrows, and glanced at the receptionist who had gone back to her paperwork. "I can't wait to find out what happened," he said. He and Sam looked at each other for a moment, and there was a big question mark over whether or not they would hug. In the end, they just averted their eyes awkwardly and Macca turned to lead us back up the corridor. "We found Old Johnson," he said. "They dumped him in the children's playground and he's still out cold. Other than that he seems okay."

Inside the hospital room, Amanda was seated with her legs and arms crossed in the far corner. She sat up as we entered, though. "Did you do it?" she asked.

Jammas was over the other side of the room. He stood up as we entered, but didn't rush over to hug us. I think he may have wanted to, but he glanced over at Amanda before he spoke. "Hey, guys," he said, staying put. "So I hear something happened at the mine? There are SES guys everywhere."

I walked up to Old Johnson, and it wasn't until I was next to the bed that I realised Blanket was tucked under the sheets beside him. He was still comatose and connected to a beeping heart monitor, and she was fast asleep and cuddled up to his side. I reached out and stroked her hair.

Sam was answering for us. "Sean's dead. Diane would have drowned, too. Officially, the place was destroyed by floodwater."

Macca snorted. "Nature's own way of saying 'Fuck you for trying to wreck me'. What _really_ happened?"

I looked back at them. "The place was destroyed by floodwater," I repeated. "It's just that… some of the bodies washed away in it were already dead." I glanced over at Amanda, and she had a very hard expression. She'd spoken so casually about killing Diane earlier, but she certainly didn't like hearing about me killing anyone else. "Anyway, there won't be any more mining there for a while. At least until the next corporation decides they want Kimberley diamonds."

Sam held up her camera. "Ten bucks says I can make sure that never happens," she said, and looked at Macca. "You can look tragic on camera, right?"

"Can I!" he said, and grabbed one of the spare blankets from the foot of Old Johnson's bed. He draped it around his shoulders. It had the hospital print on it. When he spoke, he sounded really distressed. "It was _awful_ ," he said. "God, there was dead wildlife everywhere. You can't even imagine. Their permit says 'not within two kilometres of Windjana Gorge, but they've dug right up underneath it." He pretended to try and compose himself. "I mean, I knew they would wreck the place, but I had no idea how much contempt they really had for the beautiful Australian outback. It's just heart-breaking."

We were all silent for a moment. Sam looked over the LCD. "I think you just won an Oscar," she said. "We should get more footage of this. Maybe outside. You be walking along a flooded gutter looking really thoughtful, it'll be awesome!" She pointed at Jammas. "You can be comforting him," she said, and then turned around to Amanda. "And you can—"

Amanda interrupted her. "—Sit right here and not have a camera pointed at me." She glared at the lens.

Sam turned the camera away from her. "Right," she said at length. "I don't blame you. If I was you I wouldn't want anyone to get me on camera, either."

I smothered a smile that was threatening to grow on my lips. Amanda rolled her eyes, but didn't engage with her.

"Come on," Sam was saying to the boys, "before it's too dark to be able to see all the water!" She stopped in the doorway and looked back at me. "You're coming, right?"

I shook my head. "I have some questions for Amanda."

"Oh, right," Sam said. "Okay, cool. Well, we'll be back in a sec." She looked over at Blanket, and then at Amanda, who was deliberately not looking at us. Then she looked hopefully at me.

I rolled my eyes. "Go on," I said, and she grinned brightly at me and kissed me on the lips. It was just a sweet gesture, there was nothing passionate about it at all. I still felt a bit awkward. It would be better if we could be alone.

"Did you really have to do that?" Amanda asked after she was gone. "I get it, you found _true love_. You don't need to rub it in my face."

I ignored her. I took off my daypack and put it on the chair Jammas had been sitting on, fishing the Slave Stone out from the bottom of it. I double-checked it definitely was Blanket beside Old Johnsons – even though I _knew_ it was – and pulled it out with my hands. I held it up. "I need you to figure out how to fix him," I said, and threw it to her.

She caught it, her boredom fading. I watched her turn it over in her hands again, examining it from every angle. There was a look of awe about her. "It's amazing to think what this chunk of dead rock can do," she said.

"Yeah, so 'amazing'," I said, gesturing at Old Johnson. "It can take people's loved ones away from them."

Amanda flinched. "Well that's something you're quite skilled at yourself," she said.

I sighed. Perhaps under normal circumstances I would have been able to stop myself from taking the bait, but I was tired and sore. "Amanda, I kill people who are trying to kill me. Would you rather I just let them succeed? God knows what the Frosts would have done if I had let Sean shoot me." I nodded at Blanket. "I know he had kids, kids like Blanket. But he shouldn't have been pointing a gun at me and doing terrible things to innocent people with that thing." I gestured at the stone.

She wasn't looking at me, just staring absently at the stone in her hands. "Yeah, I knew who he was working for," she said quietly. It didn't really make sense, as Sean wasn't really working _for_ Diane, even if she tried to order him around. I didn't understand why she'd said it, so I decided to leave it.

I let a silence stretch between us. After I'd calmed a little, I spoke again. "So, do you think you can do it?"

She took a breath. "I'm not sure it's possible. Even if it is, I can't do it now." I frowned at her, and she looked at the bed. "The kid's here."

I scrunched up my face and nodded. "That's right," I said. We both looked at Blanket. Despite the fact there was lots of activity around her, she was fast asleep. "I don't really want to wake her," I said, remembering when Roth had told me about Mum and Dad. "She probably thinks she's about to lose him. Maybe she is. It's just so awful to lose family."

"Yeah, it is," Amanda said. When I looked at her with surprise, she scowled at me. "What, you think you're the only one?"

I watched her. "You lost your parents, too?"

She opened her mouth as if she was about to snap at me again, but and changed her mind and closed it. She gazed at the stone in her lap, and it was several seconds before she spoke. She sounded milder when she did. "My father," she said. "Very recently. I wasn't going to tell you. I can't really believe I am. I'm sure I'll regret it, because I know how you're going to react."

"I know what you mean," I said, assuming she meant how people would speak with such pity. All I'd wanted to do was lock myself away and never talk to anyone ever again. Maybe that's why she was so angry all the time?

She laughed once, humourlessly. "The most fucked up thing about it was that he didn't even know I was alive." She swallowed. "It had to be that way. He was mixed up with some really dangerous people." When I didn't say anything, she continued. "But he was a good guy, really. At heart. He didn't deserve what happened to him."

I hoped she wouldn't think I was probing. "What happened to him?"

She swallowed. "I really can't believe I'm actually telling you this," she said, and then looked me straight in the eye. "He was shot to death, I used to think it was by someone he trusted." She paused, still looking at me. "But now I don't really know what to think."

Why was she looking at me like that? There was such accusation in it, as if _I_ was the one who'd been holding then gun. Maybe I had been; I'd shot a great number of men, I supposed any one of them could have been her father. Not many of them had trusted me, though. Actually, only one had.

My jaw dropped.

Tall, blond hair. Someone who thought their daughter was dead and who was 'mixed up with dangerous people'. There was only one person who I could think of who matched that description, and I'd accidentally killed him in Egypt, thinking he'd double-crossed me. He hadn't, but he still died at my hands.

"You're _Larson's_ daughter," I realised aloud, still gaping at her. When she didn't say anything, I spoke instead. "I thought you were dead!"

She made a sweeping motion with her hands, presenting herself. "I guess not," she said, but then she stopped joking. "You know Natla," she said. "It had to be that way. I was going to fall off the radar and then look through every history book I could get my hands on until I could figure out how to kill her and free him." She shook her head. "Things never turn out the way you expect."

I wet my lips. It was so much to take in. "I know this is sort of hollow, coming from me," I said. "But I'm so sorry." She looked up at me. "Larson _was_ a good man. We were both trying to do the right thing. That woman played us both."

Amanda nodded slowly. "Yeah, I know what she's like."

"If it's any consolation, I think about him all the time."

I had genuinely meant it, and when Amanda looked up at me, I could see at first she thought I was lying. Then, from the expression on my face she could clearly see I wasn't. She closed her eyes for a moment, and then looked back down at the stone with a very pained expression. "Fuck," she said. "Fuck, what am I doing?" When I didn't say anything, she stood. "I need to get out of here," she said, and made for the door. I stopped her with a hand on her arm. She looked down at it.

"I'm sorry, Amanda. I am."

She shook me off, and I could see tears in her eyes. "Don't fucking touch me," she said. "I'm _nothing_ like Dad!" The tears spilt over her cheeks as she left.

"Amanda!" I called after her as I stuck my head out of the door and saw her marching down the corridor, wiping at her cheeks with her wrists. I considered going after her, but then thought better of it. She probably needed to be alone, and not with the woman who'd killed her father. It still hurt a little, thinking about him. If only I just waited another few seconds before firing…

I walked back into the hospital room and over to the bed. Old Johnson just looked like he was sleeping. When Diane had been about to give me a directive with the stone, I'd been very dimly aware of what was happening around me. Very dimly. Maybe I could comfort him. "Hey, Old Johnson," I said to him, touching his arm. "We're going to try and figure out how to get you better, alright?"

He didn't even stir.

Blanket did, though. I stroked her hair again. Poor little thing, she must be so tired.

Well, while I waited for the others to come back I should probably inspect the damage I'd done to myself this time. The hospital room had a small ensuite with a shower and a toilet. Above the hand basin there was a mirror. I turned the light on and leaned up to it. Something had obviously hit my nose. It was a _little_ swollen, and still the same colour it had been on Sam's camera. I also had a bruise on my cheekbone. I felt around my scalp and found three lumps from where I'd been smacked in it. Actually, one of them felt a bit crusty and I assumed it had been bleeding. I lift my t-shirt and looked around my middle; with the paintings all banished by Blanket, I was able to spot a few bruises. I tested my ribs. They all seemed firm, one or two of them hurt a little, but it was probably nothing serious. My eyes fell on my scar, and that reminded me of Larson again, that time he'd walked in on me pulling out my own stitches.

I let my t-shirt fall. I'd been lucky this time, I supposed. Or maybe I was just getting better at this?

I hadn't realised just how long I'd been in there until I heard conversation in the hospital room.

"Ah, fuck, they're not here." That was Jammas. "I don't really feel like chilling in a hospital room. Reminds me too much of my uncle," he said. "I'm going to go and find them."

"No worries." That was Macca's voice.

I heard footsteps and I suppose he must have left. I was about to announce myself, but when Sam spoke, I changed my mind.

"Does it really need to be weird between us?" she asked Macca.

I raised my eyebrows and stood behind the doorway to the bathroom.

I heard Macca release a breath. "You tell me," he said, and I think he sounded a little defensive. "I have no idea what's going on with you."

Sam made a noise. "I'm sorry," she said, and she did actually sound it. "I didn't really think you were interested. I kind of always thought men only wanted one thing."

"What if I had been interested?" he asked her, and I couldn't read his voice. I didn't know if he meant that he wasn't interested, or that he was. Either way, I just felt so bad for him.

"I hope you weren't," Sam said. "Because, Macca, I'm bad news. I always have been. I'm _hopeless_ at relationships. Just ask Lara. I keep fucking everything up with her, as well." She actually sounded a bit emotional when she said that last part. I winced. Was _I_ making her feel like that?

"Come here," Macca said, and I think they probably hugged. "Just for the record, not all guys just want the one thing." There was silence for a few seconds. "Okay, I'm going to go after Jammas," he said. "Blanket can't possibly sleep that well with us all talking around her. You coming?"

A bag rustled as she took something out of it. "Nah, I'm going to have a shower and change," she said. "I'm _so_ looking forward to being clean and having dry clothes again." She paused. "And I _am_ sorry."

He laughed once. "Yeah, I know," he said, and I think they hugged again. "See ya."

After I was sure he'd gone, I walked slowly into the doorway of the bathroom. Sam was still facing the door, just standing there and gazing at it while she hugged a bundle of clothes to her chest.

She turned toward me when she saw me, though, smiling in recognition. It didn't reach her eyes. "I guess you heard all that," she said, and sighed.

I pressed my lips together and nodded. She looked back at the doorway, her eyes glazed. "So I helped you save the world," she said. "But I messed up with you _and_ him, and now everyone's angry with me."

I watched her. "I love you," I said. "And everyone makes mistakes. I just wish you didn't always have to worry about whether or not I'm into you. That's my fault."

She looked at me again, and her eyes were swimming. I made 'come here' motion with my hand, and she walked over to me and let me put my arms around her. Between us, there was a roll of clothes and there were too many for them just to be hers. I stepped back from her a little and looked down at them.

"I brought you some dry clothes from the car," she explained. "I figured you're probably just as uncomfortable as I am."

I laughed a couple of times and smiled at her. I _was_ horribly uncomfortable, and it was lovely of her to think of me. She'd chosen a darker t-shirt for herself, I saw, which I was almost disappointed about. I rather liked having a window into her cleavage with the damp white one. I inclined my head backwards into the en suite. "You said you wanted a shower?"

Her eyes lit up at the invitation. "Really? Oh, my God. You have no idea how much I need it."

I grinned at her. "We can be dry _and_ clean," I said, "and…" I lifted my top, showing her that all the paintings were gone. We were close enough to Blanket to not have to worry about them.

She was on me before I'd even let my t-shirt go, and the bundle of clothes fell on the floor at our feet. She had a hand looped behind my head and pulled my lips against hers. It hurt my split lip a little, but I decided to ignore the discomfort. She kissed me with so much hunger that it was a little frightening, and when our cheeks touched I could feel the tears had spilt. I pulled away from her a moment to wipe them away with my thumbs.

Over her shoulder, I saw Old Johnson and Blanket on the bed. Neither of them seemed to be paying any attention to us, but it made me uncomfortable, anyway. "Come in here," I told Sam, bending down stiffly to pick up the clothes and leading her into the ensuite. The door didn't lock and that made me uncomfortable, too. I supposed I would just have to deal with it.

When I'd closed the door and turned toward Sam, she was standing and directing me a very intense expression. While I was watching her, she slowly pulled her t-shirt over her head, held it for a second, and then dropped it on the tiles. Then, she reached around behind her and undid her bra, letting it fall down her arms and join her t-shirt.

The fabric of her top must have been cold from being damp, because her nipples were already taut. She had a couple of bruises on her middle, but otherwise she was just flawless, and had such beautiful milky skin. I'd seen her naked a million times but she still took my breath away.

"Well," she said, smirking. "Are you just going to stand there?"

I closed my jaw and walked up to her. She kissed me, and I could feel her smiling into my lips as she helped me take off my own t-shirt. We struggled a little with my tight sports bra because it was a halter-neck, but it wasn't very long before all our clothes were in a pile on the floor and Sam was leading me into the cubicle.

The water was warm already when we turned it on, and there was a liquid soap dispenser on the wall. It foamed very enthusiastically with very little effort. Sam and I spent a few minutes making bubble beards, kissing through them and then spraying each other in the face. In the end, Sam brushed the wet hair plastered across my cheeks aside, and kissed me. It pushed me back against the warm tiles, and I relaxed into them. I could feel her breasts and stomach pressed against me, and I loved the slick feeling of wet skin on skin. I pulled her body more firmly against mine.

"I love you," she murmured when she leaned away from me for a moment. "So much. So much, Lara."

I smiled, leaning my forehead against hers as the water sprayed on our shoulders and pooled between our breasts. "I love you, too," I said. "And even when it seems like I don't, I do."

She kissed me again, and when she did, I felt one of her hands drop from my waist and trail down my hips. I took a deep breath, smiling faintly. I knew where that hand was going, and it couldn't get there fast enough. She had stopped kissing me to watch my face, and when she saw my expression, she grinned. "Oh, my God, _yes_ ," she said. "I am _so_ turned on right now, and you finally want it!"

"Less talking," I said, just as her hand made it between my legs and silenced me. It was a good thing I was leaning against the wall, because I needed something to brace myself on as she kissed all the way down my body.

She stopped just before she knelt on the tiles, though, tracing her fingers over my stomach. "You're getting abs," she told me. "You can kind of see them, look."

"I don't really care about them right now, to be honest," I told her, possibly sounding a little impatient. She chuckled, and then lifted my thigh over her shoulder as put her mouth on me.

God… How it felt to have the water running over me and her lips between my legs. I leaned my head back against the wall; I was smiling. At one point, I think I was even _laughing_ , even if just for a moment. I stroked her hair out of her face and looked down my body at her, watching her head bob against me. Sam, I thought, _My_ Sam… I would have even said it, I think, except I thought I could hear movement in the hospital room. I didn't think the nurses would care much about us just _using_ the shower, but if they knew what Sam was doing to me in here? Wow, what she was doing to me…

"You're so wet," she murmured. "It's not just the water."

It's all for you, I thought as I breathed raggedly, but didn't say anything. I just let her lap at me until I could barely stand, until my ears were ringing and I was curling around her, grabbing on to the soap dispenser, the shower hose, the curtain… I bit my lip against making even a tiny sound, but I think I may have anyway. Sam held me steady and kept going until it had finished.

When she stood, I kissed her so deeply we were _both_ gasping for breath.

"I love you," I told her again. My legs were shaking.

"I bet you do," she said, sounding a little cheeky. Then, she looked sideways at the shower hose. "You know, I think that thing's detachable," she said, and tried. It came off the wall in her hand and she then gave it to me, leaning beside me on the wall and grinning.

I looked down at it spraying water on our legs, and then at her. She winked at me. "I like these things," she said. "You'll see."

I knew what she was implying. I stepped around in front of her, strategically angling the flow of water between her thighs. Her lips parted, and then she smiled again. "Kiss me, too," she said, and pulled me half against her. I did, and she opened her mouth on mine so our tongues pushed together. Since my other hand was free, I cupped out of her breasts with it.

It was nice just being close to her. Having her lips on mine, her body against me. I'd missed this, and I hadn't even realised how much. It was like I was being reunited with the other half of myself.

I didn't want to stop kissing her, but as she came she turned her face a little away from me, her jaw open. Watching her, I could almost feel what she was as I followed every nuance of her expression. I loved knowing I could do that to her and that she still wanted me to.

When she was done she laughed a little, pushing my hand away so the hose wasn't spraying on her anymore. She drew a very deep breath and let it out slowly, opening her eyes and smiling lazily at me. "We're getting one of these installed at home," she said, and then laughed again and kissed me.

"Our poor landlord," I said, imagining how often we were going to be bothering them.

Sam was still chuckling, and had been about to say something else, when her expression suddenly changed and she push me away, looking horrified. "Lara!"

I grabbed onto the shower curtain to prevent myself from falling over. She was looking at my torso, so I looked down at it, too. The paintings were beginning to return. I swore.

"Blanket must've woken up," Sam said. "And the party's over." She stared at my lips for a moment, and then looked away, frustrated. "Let's get dressed, I guess."

We did, careful not to stand too close to each other. God, I hoped Amanda new how to get rid of them, or could fix Old Johnson so _he_ could do it. I didn't want to spend very much longer not being able to touch the woman I loved.

When we walked out into the hospital room, the sheets were folded back and Blanket was gone.

"Amanda mentioned needed to get her out of the room in order to try and fix Old Johnson," I said. "Maybe she took Blanket out to Macca and Jammas. Oh," I said, remembering, "I found out why Amanda was so short with us."

"Yeah?" Sam prompted me as we walked briskly down the corridor towards the entrance.

I related the conversation I'd had with Amanda to her.

Sam's reaction was similar to mine. " _No way_ ," she said, her jaw dropping. For a moment I could see her eyes tracking backwards and forwards as she considered everything that had happened. "Wow. I guess it makes sense, though. Whoa." She winced. "Yeah, so no wonder she's not that happy with you. I mean, I guess she knew her dad was a mercenary, but it still can't be great to meet the person who killed him."

"Mmm," I said, feeling uncomfortable. Knowing that I'd killed him _still_ wasn't something I could easily think about. "I don't think she blames me, not anymore. But it must still be really painful."

We found Macca and Jammas around the side of the hospital in a wet park bench, having some sort of heavy discussion. Blanket wasn't with them. I felt a bit guilty about interrupting them. "Hey, have you seen Amanda?"

Jammas looked quite glum. "Yeah, for the last time, I guess." Macca patted his back. When it was clear I didn't know what he meant, he said. "She just changed her flight, it leaves in like four or five hours. I guess she couldn't wait until tomorrow to get away from us."

Something wasn't right. "She's already gone?"

Jammas nodded. "Yeah, probably. Otherwise she wouldn't make it to Broome in time."

Macca patted his back roughly. "Cheer up, mate," he said. "We're all from around Sydney. There's still hope." Jammas didn't look like he believed Macca.

I still didn't feel right. Sam and I glanced at each other. "Where's Blanket?" I asked the boys. "Have you seen her?"

Macca shook his head. "Last I saw she was asleep in the bed."

I had a very bad feeling about this. I didn't say anything else to them. My legs were still a little shaky as I ran back towards the front door of the hospital. On the way back in, I looked out towards the car park and noticed Macca's car wasn't where he'd left it. Oh, God. My heart began to pound. I sprinted through the sliding doors past the receptionist – who was yelling at me to stop, I think – and into the room.

I looked at my bag.

No, I thought. Just, please, no. Amanda, no. Please have put it back.

Sam came around the corner behind me. "Lara, what's wrong?"

I was too breathless to reply. I opened my backpack, I turned it upside down on the chair and quickly rifled through the contents. I knew what I was going to find, even as I begged whoever was listening for it to not be the case.

The Slave Stone wasn't there.

I stood back, staring at the bag. I could feel the paintings all moving around on my stomach from the commotion.

"Lara, what's wrong?" Sam repeated, coming up beside me.

My heart was hammering against my ribs. "Amanda's gone," I said. "And she's taken Blanket and the Slave Stone with her."


	24. Chapter 24

God, I could hardly keep my eyes open. How long had I been awake? I leaned a little towards the centre of the car so I could see the clock on the dash, but it was broken and flashing all zeros. Only after I got frustrated did I remember I was actually wearing a _watch_. I checked it, staring blankly at the numbers until they made sense.

I was in no state to try and figure out why I thought Amanda had stolen the Slave Stone and kidnapped poor Blanket. I didn't have to, though, not yet. We just needed to get to that airport and stop her from getting on that plane, and with the way Macca was speeding there was actually a chance we'd be able to. I could worry about the 'why' later.

That is, if the car we'd borrowed held together and managed to get us to Broome.

It was lucky we'd managed to get the car, really. When the community had learnt Old Johnson was in hospital they'd all started to trickle in to sit with him – but only one of the families had come by car. The car itself was so old it almost looked like something that belonged in one of my textbooks. Even so, the owner had insisted Sam pay some exorbitant amount to use it, despite the fact he was going to get it back. There were drawbacks to everyone knowing you were rich, it seemed.

For two thousand it wasn't much of a bargain: the left headlight was blown, and only one side of the road was lit. That wasn't nearly as concerning as how the car shook when Macca took it over the one-thirty mark. I held tightly onto the hand bar. It would be ironic if I'd survived Yamatai, Atlantis and the flood at Frost International mine only to die in a car accident. I tried to reassure myself that at least Sam wasn't driving.

I must have been dozing off again, because the spirits moving across my stomach suddenly startled me.

Sam was chuckling across the other side of the stained back seat, iPad in on hand. "Yup, you're totally ready to square off with her," she said. Macca was smirking at me in the rear vision mirror, too.

I rolled my eyes at both of them, and then narrowed them at Sam. "How are you so chirpy, anyway? You got the same amount of sleep I did."

"No-Doze," she said, showing me a phial of pills from the pocket of her trousers. "Want one? They're _full_ of caffeine."

I had been rubbing my eyes, but I accidentally bumped my bruised nose and it made my eyes water. "I tried those once during exams. They don't work."

One of her eyebrows flickered. "Not if you only take the recommended dose," she said. "I took five."

I gave her a look. "You're going to give yourself a heart attack."

She didn't look very concerned. "But," she pointed at me, "I'll be awake for it."

I had been smiling at her when I caught sight of Jammas' unusually solemn reflection in the windscreen. As soon as he saw me, he looked away. I felt guilty, and I hoped he wouldn't think I wasn't taking what had happened seriously just because I was joking about with Sam. I was just happy that everything was okay between Sam and I again.

He wasn't looking at me, but he'd know I was talking to him. "We'll figure out what's going on with Amanda. We will."

He didn't look so sure. "I'm sure she thinks she's doing the right thing…" he said uncertainly, looking out the car window into nothing as we sped along the highway in the dark. It was the first thing he'd said since we'd set out from Fitzroy Crossing. "I really want to hear from her what's going on."

Sam had gone back to staring at the iPad. I noticed her hair was still a little wet from our shower and was sticking to her cheek. I couldn't do anything about that, though, and I also couldn't shuffle over and see was she was up to. I looked down at my arms. Most of the spirits had carefully tucked themselves under my t-shirt, but even now and then I'd catch sight of a tail or head or some other design peeking out. I understood now why Amanda wore long sleeves all the time, and she didn't even have as many spirits as I did.

I look back over towards Sam. "What are you doing? I don't think I've ever seen so many lines on your forehead."

She'd been concentrating so deeply she looked surprised that I'd spoken to her. "Huh? Oh, right. I'm just having a look at the footage I shot before of Macca and Jammas. Or I was, but then I found this. Here." She dragged a finger across the screen to rewind the video and then held the iPad so I could see it. In the background of one of the shots, Amanda was surreptitiously searching through Macca's backpack. When she stood up, light glinted off the car keys which she quickly tucked into her pocket. "She took them _in frame_ and I didn't even notice it. I'm not normally that sloppy." She paused, throwing me a glance. "And _you're_ the one with the trench-like frown lines, not me. _I_ still get carded."

Clearly not convinced we actually had footage of Amanda doing anything wrong, Jammas reached around the seat and put his hand out toward the iPad. "Can I see that?" Sam cued the video again and then let him take it.

Now that her hands were free, I wanted to take one of them, but I couldn't. I wasn't used to not touching her when something was wrong. It was odd.

Jammas made a noise, giving the iPad back to Sam and refusing to look at any of us. Macca lifted a hand off the steering wheel to put it firmly friend's shoulder for a moment. Neither of them said anything.

Sam turned her head to look at me, her eyes travelling from mine to my arm. My skin there tingled in anticipation where she'd normally tuck her hand.

"Maybe if I touched you really quickly they wouldn't have time to jump onto me," she suggested hopefully.

I shook my head. Rescuing them had been my decision and no one was going to have to deal with them except me, especially not Sam.

She slumped back in her seat. "I knew you'd say that," she said, absently playing with the lock screen on the iPad.

No one said anything for a while as we drove along the road. We were all half-asleep and lost in our own thoughts.

"What happens if we do catch her?" Macca asked eventually, making eye contact with me in the rear vision mirror again. "So, she's got magic powers, right? What happens if she tries something? Do you reckon you could beat her?"

That was something I didn't think we needed to worry about. "She has Blanket," I reminded him. "She shouldn't be able to use her powers." God, and that didn't make sense, either. I exhaled. "Why would she take Blanket when Blanket _stops_ her from being able to use her powers against us...?"

"Do you think she would use them, though? Against _us_?" Jammas asked, I think he meant it rhetorically.

Sam answered it, anyway. "She's threatened to before," she told him. "When we sprung her, like, doing whatever with the spirits in that cave." Jammas looked like he was going to open his mouth to defend her again, so Sam continued. "Maybe she's been pretending to be nice to you—"

"I actually don't think it was pretending," Macca interrupted her, glancing with concern towards Jammas. "Yeah, she's a full-on grump, but whenever something annoying needed to be done, she'd help. I don't really know why she'd bother unless she was enjoying our company on some level."

Privately, I was convinced she'd been befriending them for some strategic reason, whatever that could be. I didn't say so, though. Why Jammas would be interested in someone like that, I had no idea, but he clearly was. I didn't want to hurt his feelings any more than they already had been.

Sam scoffed. "Maybe on some level she was enjoying your company, but now she's stolen _your_ car, _our_ Slave Stone and kidnapped a helpless little kid. That doesn't sound like something a friend does." It was a good point, and neither of the boys had anything to say about it. "So, yeah, 'pretending' might be exactly right. How long were you friends with her, anyway?"

Jammas and Macca looked at each other. Macca answered. "Jammas has been after her since uni started this year, but she only started actually hanging out with us probably a month ago?" He looked at Jammas for confirmation, and Jammas nodded. He continued. "She came back from Europe just as we were organising the blockade here. She was really helpful, actually. She's the one who contacted the local Aboriginal associations to get official permission to gather on their land."

"A month?" I had the impression they'd been friends for ages, it was odd to hear it hadn't been that long, after all. "She was in England at Cambridge beforehand, I suppose?"

"Nah, I don't think so," Macca said. "I don't know what she was doing. Archaeological stuff somewhere, probably. I don't really know what you guys do when you're not actually on site."

"That depends on what we specialise in," I said. Amanda's specialty was Australian Aboriginal history, and I couldn't imagine how she'd research that anywhere but here in Australia.

While I was staring into Macca's dreadlocks and wondering what Amanda had been up to in Europe, Sam poked me in the thigh with the corner of her iPad and then held it at me. I accepted it, looking quizzically at her. She nodded her head toward it. She's opened a word processor and typed, " _You going to tell them about Larson?_ "

I pressed my lips together and shook my head at her, typing, " _She basically said she doesn't blame me anymore. It's too complicated. I don't want to go into it with them."_

I gave it back to her and she read it. She then watched me for a moment or two, frowning. I must have had my 'trench-like' frown lines on display again, because she opened SketchBook and scribbled away on it with her index finger. Afterwards, she held the iPad up so I could see it.

She'd finger-painted ' _OK!_ ' and drawn a flower with a smiley face.

I snorted. I must have been smiling as well, because she shot me this coy little grin, and then went back to reviewing footage.

I watched her for a moment and then leaned my head back against the seat, still smiling. _Sam._ What would I do without her?

On the way into Broome, we had to overtake a number of orange SES vehicles, and, memorably, we sped past a police car at probably thirty over the speed limit.

"Good thing he didn't pull us over," Macca said, tapping the window where a faded brown sticker was half-peeled off. "Car's been unregistered for more than five years."

I twisted in my seat to stare behind us, half expecting the police car to turn around with its sirens blaring. It didn't, it just ignored us. I suppose they had more important things to do with all the bodies washing up at the mine. I'd been half-thinking we should report Blanket as missing to the police, even though Macca had said they wouldn't do anything about it soon enough to stop Amanda getting on the plane. I turned forward in my seat again. Macca was probably right. By the time they had resources to address a potential kidnapping, Amanda would have already disappeared into suburban Sydney.

When we finally started to see lights from the houses in Broome, it was well beyond the time Amanda had told the boys she needed to be at the airport the day beforehand.

We sped into the airport carpark, snapping the boom gate and abandoning the car in a No Standing zone.

We all sprinted across the grass and rushed inside the terminal. On a screen near the doorway, I spotted a Departures screen. I could hardly believe my eyes: at the bottom of the screen was the text _SYDNEY QR1031 00:05 FINAL CALL._ It was flashing.

"They're still here!" I said, feeling a big smile spread across my face. Beyond the screen, I saw the small security desk and a bored-looking guard reading a newspaper beside it.

Without waiting for the others, I rushed over and was about the put my backpack on the belt when I remembered it had the guns in it. In the second before I gave my backpack to Macca I must have looked suspicious, because the security guard narrowed his eyes at me. "Boarding pass," he said, and held out his hand.

I stared at it. "I just need to speak to someone who's about to board," I said. "It's very important."

"Passengers only beyond this point." He saw me look over towards check-in, because he added, "Flight's full and check-in is closed. Sorry."

I sized the security guard up, and then looked over his shoulder towards the last few people queuing for the flight. Before I could do anything I definitely would regret, though, Sam stepped forwards. "I know you don't normally do this," she said in her sweetest voice to the man, "but it might be _the last time_ we get to see this little girl who's on the plane. Could you maybe make an exception for us just this once?" She paused. " _Please?_ "

"No," the man said flatly. "Not even for you or your celebrity friend. There aren't many jobs up here and I don't plan on risking mine." He did look at least somewhat genuine when he repeated. "Sorry, you'll have to make other arrangements to see the girl." He looked back down at his paper, trying to signal to us that the conversation was over.

I wasn't going to be shut down that easily. "It's not even _her child_ ," I blurted out, taking a step toward him. "She's _kidnapping_ a child who doesn't belong to her. Don't you care about that?"

He looked up again. Instead of looking angry, though, he just looked tired. "Whether I care or not doesn't matter. I can't let you through here." He moved in such a way that I could see he had a gun on his belt. "Custody disputes are a matter for the Family Court, not for airport security. Anyway, the gate's just closed. She'll already be on the plane."

I turned around to look at the screen, and sure enough, the text now read _GATE CLOSED._ I stared at it. I wanted to shoot that bloody guard, run past him and drag Amanda off that plane. I could feel my face go red, and in response the spirits were swirling around nervously on my stomach. I couldn't do any of that, though, because I couldn't rescue Blanket or get the Slave Stone back from inside a jail cell.

Sam saw my expression. "Just leave it," she murmured, looking very much like she wanted to put a settling hand on my arm. "We'll figure something out."

"I put a bomb on the plane," Macca said suddenly. "None of these guys were involved, though. Just me."

Even with everything that had happened, Jammas couldn't help it: he burst out laughing. Macca glared at him, and then looked back at the security guard. "I did," he said firmly. "That plane will blow into a million pieces if it takes off. " Then, as if his story wasn't unbelievable enough already, he added, "You have to take my threat seriously, that sign says." He pointed at the sign beside the guard.

Instead of looking at the sign, the security guard gave Macca a long hard stare and then rolled his eyes. "Go home, mate," he said. "You're not fooling anyone." When we didn't move, he shooed us with a flick of his hand. "Go on, go, the airport closes soon."

We walked slowly away from security, lost as to what to do next.

Aside from a few staff members we were the only ones left in the terminal, and I could hear the sombre tones of a newsreader from a set mounted in the corner. I was only half-paying attention to it until I saw Sean and Diane Frost's headshots appear on the screen. " _Missing in WA flood disaster: mining magnate twins Sean & Diane Frost_", the news ticker read. Good riddance, I thought, but I felt uneasy.

Sam had been watching, too. She made a disgusted noise. "I hate it when the media canonises dead people, regardless of what they were _actually_ like." She was still holding the iPad, and she looked down at it. "I'll fix that," she said darkly.

Macca had already walked to the far window. "Hey, if we really want to torture ourselves we can all stand here and watch the plane take-off," he said with false cheer.

We did exactly that. It was so surreal – I could easily have leapt out onto the runway and prevented it from leaving. Only a thin panel of glass was preventing me from doing exactly that. As the plane disappeared into the clouds, I exhaled.

"Fuck this," I heard Jammas say quietly to Macca before he wandered back outside. "I'm getting some air." It was odd to hear him so serious. I watched him go.

Sam was already on her iPad. I had assumed she was cutting footage, but then she said, "Next flight is tomorrow morning at five a.m." She winced. "Wow, last minute flights are pricey." She was already tapping away at it. "What's Jammas' surname?"

Macca had been watching Jammas leave, and probably would have followed him if Sam hadn't asked him a question. "Rutland, but it doesn't matter. One of the bail conditions is that we have to report to the police station either here or in Derby every day until court on Thursday." He sighed. "The police have been trying to lock me up forever. I won't get time for getting in a blue with the truck driver because was having a go at me, too, but if I breach bail I'm gone."

I looked back out at the sky. "That was one of Amanda's conditions, too, wasn't it?"

He scrunched up his face. "Yeah. Looks like you'll be up for that ten 'k' surety you posted for her."

Sam may have been smirking a little. "I told you that you shouldn't do it," she said smugly to me.

"Don't you start," I said dryly, and ran my hand through my hair. "I need to think," I said, turning back to Macca. "Will they arrest her? Maybe all we need to do is wait and both of them will be brought safely back here."

Macca shrugged. "First time civil offender? Who knows." He looked back towards where Jammas had gone. "Hey, I'm going to go see if Jams is okay. I'll just be outside, yeah?" When I nodded him, he smiled tightly at us and then went off in search of Jammas.

Sam watched him leave, and then completed our booking as she leant back against the window. "We'll get to Sydney just after midday," she said. "Which is…" she leafed through some of the tabs on her browser, "exactly five hours after Amanda's flight lands. She could get _anywhere_ in five hours." She tapped the edge of the iPad, thinking. "I could probably convince Dad to pull some strings and get something in the news, like some fake feel-good story about trying to track down my long-lost daughter or something. I could just do audio." She paused, reconsidering. "Actually, that's a really bad idea, isn't it? Especially with how white people were stealing aboriginal kids for a century. I'd get _crucified_ if they found out it was fake… Although technically that's exactly what's just happened, hasn't it? Maybe we could do a story on how kids are still being stolen?"

Before Sam started running with another idea, I held my hand up to silence her. I knew exactly how we could keep track of Amanda and Blanket. "No need for that," I said, taking out my phone. "There are two people in Sydney who owe us a favour, remember?"

I went through my messages and spent a couple of seconds trying to decide which number to call before I held the phone to my ear.

It only rang a couple of times. I just _knew_ she was a night-owl. In the background, I could hear the title music of some sort of video game. "Well, this is a surprise," a low voice said. I could hear the smile in it. "Something tells me you're not the type to booty call. What's up?"

"Hi, Min," I said, even though she hadn't greeted me. "Sorry to do this to you, but how quickly can you get to the airport?"


	25. Chapter 25

The only good news we had that night was that Amanda had abandoned Macca's car in the airport car park. We discovered it tucked behind an enormous camper van while we were moving the old car somewhere less illegal. Surprisingly, the people mover was still in one piece. Macca had gingerly tried the doors and found them unlocked, and on closer inspection found the keys in the ignition. At that point he looked as if he was torn between bursting into tears and throwing his arms around it.

While he was digging around in the back of it for a beer cache he'd apparently created for emergencies, I checked on our suitcases. Call me cynical, but I just wanted to make sure than none of my equipment had gone missing. We were in luck: most of it was still lying on top of our cases and as far as I could see, it was all still there. All of it.

The car had been so well taken care of Amanda might as well have had it detailed and hung a pine-scented air-freshener inside.

I stood back from the car and stared at it. I didn't trust Amanda – not one bit – but now I knew she was Larson's daughter it was really hard for me to get him out of my head. I hadn't trusted him, either, and what had happened as a result? Then again, where Larson had helped me, Amanda had given me no similar reason to trust her. She'd been openly hostile and now it was very clear that she'd manipulated, lied to and used all of us. To what extent, I couldn't tell. I _hoped_ she hadn't planned it all along, but in my heart I doubted her friendship with Macca and Jammas was genuine. The more I thought about it, the more I wondered if her emotional outburst at the hospital may have been staged. I felt so stupid. I should have guessed, I should have. I just couldn't bring myself to believe that any daughter of Larson's could have done the things Amanda had done, and God knows what else she was planning. Poor Larson. I was so glad he would never know.

Something poked my arm. "Oi, Lara," that was Macca's voice beside me, "you look like you could use one of these." I looked down my arm and saw a beer bottle pressing into it, and behind it, Macca grinning at me. He'd obviously found his beer cache.

I smiled slightly and shook my head. "Thanks, but I'm basically half-asleep already, that would finish me off."

"I'll take hers!" Sam called from inside Macca's car, and a hand shot out and accepted the beer from him.

Seated on the perfectly mown lawn beside the car park, Jammas had already downed one beer in under ten seconds and was working on number two. I winced. Macca went to join him and I climbed into the car behind Sam, leaving one set of seats between us so we weren't too close.

There was nothing to do but sit there and wait, it seemed. Despite being exhausted, I was restless. Every time I found a comfortable position to slouch in, one of the spirits would slither across the surface of my skin. It was such an odd feeling, as if my whole body was covered insects.

Sam already had her camera attached to her iPad, and her screen looked like a replica video deck. She could even move the sliders with her fingers. I thought it was pretty impressive, but she kept getting frustrated with the controls.

I had been watching her fast-forwarding past some footage she'd taken in the park with Blanket and Macca, when it occurred to me Amanda could not have possibly planned the steal the Slave Stone from us or kidnap Blanket right from the beginning. To all appearances we'd all learnt Blanket's secret in that park. No one was _that_ good an actress, right? Or were they? I let my eyes fall closed; what a headache.

In any case, if kidnapping Blanket had been a last-minute addition to Amanda's plan, maybe she didn't have anything awful in mind for the little girl. Or maybe I had too much faith in people and I _should_ be really worried about what Amanda's intentions were for Blanket.

"Sam." I opened my eyes and looked up at her. "Do you think Blanket _is_ in immediate danger with Amanda?"

"I don't know," Sam said and then made a frustrated noise. "Shit! That doesn't work. I should have used the other clip." She looked up from the iPad for a moment. "Amanda's a total bitch," she said finally. "And she's a liar, and a thief and she totally strung us along. I mean, I _knew_ I didn't like her, but I had no idea she was planning to screw us all over."

"Is that a 'yes'?"

Sam shrugged and looked back at the screen. "I don't know if that means she's, like, some psychopathic sadist, though. She seemed okay with Blanket before."

I leant my head back against the headrest, looking up into the fabric on the roof of the car. "Can someone be all those horrible things and still be trusted with the welfare of a child?"

"Sean had kids. They seem okay," she pointed out. I sighed. That was a good point. Sam was stretching her neck and had glanced out the window. "Hah," she said, sounding amused by what she saw. "How bromantic."

I followed where she was looking: Macca and Jammas had passed out beside each other on the lawn. They hadn't even finished their beer.

I felt like I could do with a long sleep myself, but given that it was only two or three hours before we'd need to board, I was worried that the alarm on my watch wouldn't be loud enough to wake me up. My mobile was nearly flat, too, so I didn't trust it to last. I couldn't really rely on Sam to get us up on time, either; Sam was a lot of wonderful things, but she was probably less likely to wake me up than either my watch or my flat mobile. We'd missed flights before.

So, I had to stay awake. However, there was nothing I could actually do, I hadn't even brought any books. Just sitting there while Amanda got further and further away from us didn't seem right, especially after nearly eighteen hours of action. I felt like I still needed to be _in_ action regardless of how I was aching all over.

Sam wasn't being very interesting, either. She had her back to me in the seat, and all I could see over the top of it was her head and shoulders. Her hair was getting long, I thought, admiring how perfectly straight it was. And that neck…

"I can totally feel you staring at me," Sam said without turning around. I could see the reflection of a grin in the window.

"No, you can't," I said. "I was gazing _through_ you and trying to figure out what to do about Amanda." Well, it wasn't really a lie. I'd been worrying what to do for most of the night, just not those last few minutes.

She half-turned toward me in the seat. "You do this sighing thing all the time when you're stressing out about stuff. You weren't doing it." She flipped her hair. "Not that I blame you. I'm totally hot." She was grinning.

I rolled my eyes. " _Sam_."

She propped the iPad on top of the spine of her seat. "Since you're looking already, you want to see what I've got? It's just clips with the original audio at the moment but I think it still flows okay. It's what was _really_ going on at the mine. I'm sick of the news treating Diane and Sean like missing heroes."

I squinted at her. "Do you really think it's a good idea to tell people about the Slave Stones?"

Sam looked surprised and then laughed a couple of times. "No…" she said at length. "But people just love to hate big business. I can work with that." She reached around the front of the iPad and touched the play button on the screen.

Her video started with an advertisement for the mine that I'd seen on telly. She'd cut it with Diane giving a speech about how many local jobs would be created, and immediately after that had some raw footage she'd taken of the miners collecting luggage from carousels from other countries and speaking maybe five or six other languages. The ad continued talking about all the measures Frost International had taken to protect the local environment, but instead of the original video, Sam had overlayed images of me discovering that the mine shaft led up into the spirit cave. Then she had Macca looking really distressed and saying that they'd breached their permit and the whole gorge was under threat, cut with two of the performers from the blockade talking about how important the gorge was to them spiritually. The last two shots were of some of the hardened miners walking about in the rain with makeshift weapons and Macca talking about how he'd been arrested just for protesting against Frost. The footage faded to the end of the original ad and the original voiceover brightly saying, "Frost International: it's all part of our plan for the future."

"It's good, right?" Sam said. "I mean, the audio doesn't mix cleanly. I need to get the crossovers less choppy and more faded. But I think it'll work. I'm going to upload it to maybe four or five different places so heaps of people will see it before it gets taken down. Frost probably has stocks in both Google and Facebook so it'll come down pretty quickly."

It was good, but it was also _very_ controversial. The Frosts were missing and presumed dead, and the video was painting them as corrupt and dishonest. "Not that I really care what happens to the twins, but do you think now is really a good time to upload it? Right when they're probably pulling both their bodies out of the water up there?"

Sam looked smug. "Now is the _perfect_ time. You just watch. It'll be all over the news in half an hour."

That was what I was worried about. Still, Sam was the media guru.

It was a huge relief when the horizon started to get lighter, and the airport terminal lights flickered on. Sam and I had been debating waking Macca and Jammas, but while we were checking we had everything packed, the sprinklers came on and did the job for us. Predictably, their wet singlets came off. It would have been like a Calvin Klein advertisement, except that they both looked worse than they had _before_ they'd slept.

When I'd finished repacking everything, all that was left were Sean's two empty handguns. I held them in either hand, staring at them. I couldn't take them on the plane with me, but it was such a shame to have to dump two perfectly good pistols.

Macca saw me. "I'll bring those across for you," he said. His voice was hoarse from lack of sleep. "I have to drive back to Sydney anyway."

I looked up at him. "Really? You're not worried about getting caught with illegal firearms?"

He shrugged. "They have to have reasonable cause to search my car. I won't give them cause."

"Dude, your _hair_ gives them cause," Jammas told him and pushed him in the back of the head.

"Don't think I won't deck you because you're cut about some chick," Macca warned him, but he was smiling. He turned back to us. "Guess this is it for now," he said. "I'd hug you, but I don't need any more tattoos." He didn't hug Sam, either, and I was grateful. After what had happened it would have been odd for him to do it in front of me, especially given he was topless. "I hope by the time we rock up in Sydney, you'll have Blanket and the stone thing and have sorted Amanda out."

"Me too," I said, but I had a feeling it wasn't going to be that simple.

There was a different security guard on duty that morning, and other than looking strangely at my bruised nose, he didn't give us any trouble. We were the last people to board, though, because Sam was trying to upload her video and, according to her, the WiFi in the airport dropped out more often than she had at school.

It was only when the staff were actually on the brink of closing the gate that we boarded, and before the plane took off Sam announced it had uploaded successfully.

"It'll be all over the news by the time we land," she said, and then leant against the window and went to sleep before the plane had even taken off.

It was a relief when the plane did finally take off, because there was a spare seat next to us and I was able to put some space between Sam and I. I had reclined my seat and settled in for a long nap when suddenly I had a vivid memory of Min's car not starting in Sydney.

I opened my eyes. What if the spirits weren't happy about me taking them away from their cave and caused the engines in the plane to stop suddenly, too? I looked out the window, past Sam's peaceful face and at the wings of the plane. It was impossible this high, but I _swear_ I saw birds, and that reminded me of that plane that had crashed in the Hudson River in America because of geese. Could the spirits on me do that as well, I wondered?

I took a few deep breaths and tried to relax. I'd nearly fallen asleep again when one of the spirits moved across my stomach. It felt warm and heavy like an actual creature. I jumped and inadvertently caused the person behind me to spill orange juice in their lap.

That whole flight, I didn't manage to get any sleep at all. Every time I'd relax my mind would race – so many short, sharp images of jumping around, falling and flying through the air.

I had been reclined with my eyes closed trying not to think about crashing when someone had touched my shoulder. Before I was completely aware of what I was doing I had shouted, "No, don't touch me!" and recoiled violently. It was then that I realised it had just been the stewardess telling me to put my seat upright for landing, and now I had half the plane gaping at me.

It must have been very loud, too, because it woke Sam up. I swallowed as I looked up in horror at the stewardess. "I'm so sorry!" I said, but I obviously couldn't explain why touching me was so very dangerous. Judging by all the shocked faces around me, though, they'd all decided I was some egotistical celebrity who had a weird thing about personal space.

Sam was quick to try and comfort me. "On the bright side, since we're landing and there's no electronic equipment allowed, no one would have got that on video."

"Well, as long as no one can put it on YouTube…" I said dryly, drawing a deep breath and releasing it a length. God, I was _exhausted_. People posting things online about me was the last possible thing I cared about at that moment. Though, judging by the teenager across the aisle from me, it was something I was going to have to be more conscious of. He was staring at my arms. At least I couldn't feel the spirits half-tucked under my sleeve moving.

"Cool tats," he said, after working up enough courage to speak to me. "Where'd you get them?"

I smiled politely, but hurriedly pulled my sleeve down in case they _did_ decide to move. "It's a long story."

It was close to midday when we alighted, and stepping into the full sun on the tarmac did actually make me feel a little better. I'd pulled all-nighters before exams before, I'd probably be right for at least a little while.

The first thing I did was try to turn my phone on, but it was completely flat. I swore under my breath as we walked inside the terminal. "Can you get our stuff?" I asked Sam.

She'd already found a mounted telly in one of the gates. "In a second," she said distractedly, staring at it. "I just want to see what coverage we're getting."

I sighed at her and then went in search of a socket. I found one in the corner, but had to sit on the ground to use it. Ignoring my shaking muscles, I crouched down and I selected Min's number. It only rang a couple of times before a recording of her voice said, "Hi, this is Min Lee…" I hung up before I could hear the rest of the voicemail message and tried to call her again. Again, the call was rejected.

I stared at my phone.

I worried for a few moments that Min and Bree had been somehow captured by Amanda. If anything happened to them, it would be all my fault.

While I was panicking, my phone vibrated and a message from Bree popped up. I'd never opened a message faster in my life. " _we_ _cant talk rite now,_ " it read, " _will explain soon just tell taxi to take u to cronulla park asap."_

I released a breath I hadn't been aware I was holding. I read it a few times and then took out a pen and wrote the name of the park on the back of my hand. I wanted to message her back, but since my phone needed to be plugged in to stay on and the longer it was plugged in the longer it was going to take us to get there, I didn't.

Sam was still parked in front of the telly where I'd left her. "Bree messaged me, we have to get to somewhere called 'Cronulla'," I said as I approached her.

"Hmm?" she said, still looking at the screen. "Look, the Frost exposé went viral. Two million views so far. There's been some awards show or something on for the past five minutes, though, so I can't get much of an idea about coverage." She held up the iPad. "And both this and my cell are dead so I can't check online."

"We don't really have time to, anyway," I said, motioning for her to follow me. "Come on, we have to get going, I think they've found her."

She didn't move. "Just two seconds…"

I would normally have taken Sam's hand and dragged her away from the screen. Instead, though, I just walked towards the luggage carousel and when she realised I'd actually gone without her, she came running after me.

After we'd collected our luggage and I'd fished out the only long-sleeved top I had and ducked into the women's to put it on, we did as Bree instructed and hailed a taxi.

It was going to be a hot day, and despite the fact my top was fast-wicking fabric, it was horribly warm and clung to me like a second skin. "Did you buy this?" I asked Sam, trying to fan some air inside it. I didn't remember buying anything so horribly tight.

"I got it at the North Face sale," she said, and then leaned forward and spoke to the taxi driver. "Hey, would you mind if we had the radio a little louder?"

He turned it up, and we spent the next few minutes listening to a series of generic pop songs and waiting for news coverage while Sam writhed impatiently.

Meanwhile, I worried about what we'd find when we made it to Cronulla. They hadn't been able to talk, what did that mean? Were they hidden somewhere, following her? Were they in any danger? I scrunched my eyes shut. God, I shouldn't have brought them into this, but what other choice did I have?

The window was wound down, and it wasn't long before we could smell the salt air. The driver pulled up at a park before we'd had the opportunity to hear any news at all. Sam settled the bill and the driver took our cases out of the boot for us, and then drove off.

On one side of the road were a series of apartment buildings that reminded me of the Gold Coast, and on the other was a park and beyond that, a beach. Families with children eating ice-creams wandered past us, and there were groups of people lying all over the lawn in the park. The apartment block gardens, the palm trees lining the road and the grass in the park, they were all such a rich, juicy green. It was a stark contrast to the dry orange sand and parched shrubs in The Kimberley.

I spotted someone by the beach waving at us with both hands, and recognised the mass of blond curls and indecently small amount of clothing. Behind her, Min was inclined with one arm crossed against her stomach and a single hand raised toward us.

"There they are!" I said to Sam, pointing and waving back. I quickly realised Amanda wasn't with them, though, and my heart sank. They must have lost her.

We wheeled our suitcases through the park anyway to greet them, anyway.

Bree rushed up and looked as if she was going to hug me, but I stepped back and put my hands up to stop her. The hurt showed on her face, and that felt like a punch in the stomach. "I have something contagious," I explained quickly. "I'll show you later."

She made an 'oh' shape with her mouth. "Yeah, you look _terrible_ ," she said. "You must be pretty sick."

Sam looked at me for a second, and then burst out laughing. Min still had that long-suffering expression, but said much more tamely, "Hi, guys. And Lara, you don't look as bad as Bree says. Well, except for your nose."

"Luckily, I can't see myself," I said and then got straight to business. "I gather you lost Amanda and Blanket?"

Bree and Min looked at each other. "Well, not exactly," Bree said, and then made a face. "When they left the café, we just couldn't follow them."

I frowned, I didn't understand what Bree was implying. "Are they inside one of these buildings?" I looked up at the row of them towering over the park.

When Min stood straight, I realised she'd been leaning against something. She put a hand on top of it; it was a set of those old coin-operated binoculars that looked like Wall-E, mounted on a pole and facing out to sea.

Sam and I both stared at the device and while we were, Min put a twenty-cent coin in it and stood aside. I looked at her and then leant forward to the eyepiece and adjusted the focus.

When the image sharpened, I understand exactly what Min and Bree had meant.

Way out to sea and almost not visible over the horizon, a huge cargo ship was anchored.


	26. Chapter 26

I stepped aside from the binoculars to give Sam a turn. Without them, I couldn't really see anything on the horizon, aside from birds I wasn't certain were actually there. The ship must be just so far out.

"What is Amanda doing on a _cargo_ ship?" I asked, half to myself. "Do you think she's planning to smuggle Blanket and the stone out of Australia?"

Sam stood up. "Technically she _is_ outside Australia," she said. I looked at her for an explanation. "Remember when Grimm was always yelling at the Japanese coastguard and he'd wake me up in the middle of the night to interpret? It was always over being far enough away from the coast that he didn't have to answer to them."

I did remember that; you didn't quickly forget one of Grimm's midnight rants. "So she's on a boat that's deliberately outside Australian waters," I said. "God, what is going on here? Two days ago she was just a grumpy Ph.D. candidate."

"So," Sam said, leaning on the extended handle on her suitcase. "What do we do now? Get a boat and go out there to find out what's going on?"

"Uh, are you sure?" Bree interjected. "The guy who took her out there looked kind of dodgy. I don't think you can just rock up to a ship that's obviously trying to get away with something and be all like, 'Hey, let me on, one of your passengers stole something of mine'."

"Well, maybe not in daylight," I said, smiling darkly at Bree. "What time is it?"

Bree checked her phone. "Nearly one," she said. "And by the way you still haven't told us what's going on with this girl even though you _woke us up_ in the middle of the night."

Min made a noise. "Don't pay any attention to her, Lara. She was out drinking with her brother."

Bree turned her head slowly toward Min. "Traitor," she said. "This is going to be the last time I ever have something to hold over Lara Croft and _you_ have to ruin it." She turned back to me. "But it's true, you haven't told us."

I looked across at Sam who swept her hand out in a 'go ahead' motion. Bree looked pointedly at me, with arms crossed and a defiant expression. I pressed my lips together for a moment. "It's rather a long story—" I said, and then when Bree opened her mouth thinking I was trying to avoid actually telling it, I threw my hands up and said quickly, "—which I'll happily tell you, but we have to sort out what we're actually doing right now."

Sam yawned, which set us all off. She finished hers in a laugh. "I can tell you what I'm doing right now," she said to us. "I need _sleep_. If we can't do anything in broad daylight, we might as well go lie down somewhere." She looked at the park around us, but it was full of people and a good number of them were watching us. A couple of them even had their phones out. "Somewhere else," she added.

I looked back out toward where the ship was. I wanted to stay right there in that park and watch it in case it left, but I didn't really see what purpose that would serve. We couldn't follow it unless we had a boat, and even then it would be a very bad idea to approach it in daylight. And as much as I was trying to ignore what state I was in, I was absolutely exhausted. I wouldn't be any use like this if we _did_ board. Anyway, cargo ships were slow. Even if it did leave, a few hours wouldn't give it that much of a head start.

"Okay," I finally agreed in the middle of another yawn as I looked up at the towers. "We can probably find a hotel here, can't we?"

"No," Bree said firmly. It seemed rather a strong answer and we all looked at her as she explained. "We sat at the airport in the middle of the night to follow this girl around for you, so we should get to say where you stay," she said. I wasn't following the logic there, so she added. "You're coming back to Min's place."

Min looked surprised. Clearly this wasn't something the couple had discussed. "So our reward for a night without sleep is to sleep on the floor while these two take my bed?"

"Yeah," Bree said, looking smug. "You can say you actually had _Lara Croft_ in your bed."

I think I knew what Bree's next Facebook status was likely to be.

"It's alright, we'll take the floor," I told Min, letting them begin to lead us back to the road where all the cars were parked. Her expression suggested I would do no such thing.

"I'm actually happy with the bed," Sam said. She put a hand up. "Hey, we just killed the bad guys, I feel like that kind of earns us a mattress." I didn't want to say anything and seem impolite, but I was glad that she'd insisted we'd get the bed. My muscles were just _aching_.

I must have been moving a little stiffly, because Min actually looked like she might try to take my case for me. I deliberately didn't make eye contact with her so she wouldn't offer. She guessed what I was doing and chuckled. "'Killed the bad guys'," she repeated as she fished her car keys out of the deep pockets in her jeans. "Should I ask?"

I winced, remembering Sam's reaction to me burying my axe in someone's back. "Probably not."

"It's so obvious anyway," Bree said, walking a little ahead of us and turning to speak. "You're up in the Kimberley and this really controversial mine just happens to get completely flooded, and two seconds later a video appears all over the Internet bagging the mine and you're in it."

I said the same thing to them I said to Macca and Jammas. "Officially, it got flooded that _that's_ how people died." Min opened the boot of her car and I lifted my case into it. Min then helped Sam with hers while I stood a good distance away from them.

"But that's not what happened, is it?" Bree said with a big grin on her face. "You did something at that mine! You should have seen the look on Min's face when she saw the flood on the news. You made her fucking year. What _really_ happened?"

While we all got in the car, Sam and I shared a look. I wasn't sure how much I should really tell them and I agonised over that while I put my seatbelt on. Min looked over her shoulder at me as she reversed out of the car park. "You don't have to tell us," she said, and gave me a look which indicated she suspected something.

In the end, as we were driving back to Min's place, I did tell them about what happened at the mine. I even told them things I hadn't told Macca and Jammas, such as that Amanda was Larson's daughter. I had planned on glossing over particular details such as the fact that I'd shot Sean Frost and anything about the Slave Stone, but Bree coaxed it all out of me. Actually, coaxed was probably the wrong word. I'd never come across someone who was so shamelessly bossy and demanding. I wouldn't have wanted to get on the wrong side of her; she was absolutely relentless. Sam watched the whole story from behind her camera, a giant smirk on her face. Bree was only too happy to toss her curls and make eyes at the lens, but even she sobered as I recounted some of the darker parts of the story. Min didn't say anything at all while I spoke, but from the thin line she'd pressed her mouth into I could see that she believed me. Bree, I didn't know about. She seemed far too entertained to be taking everything seriously.

When I'd finished there were a few moments where no one spoke. I looked out the window into the traffic, wondering if the long silence meant I'd made the wrong decision in telling them _everything_ about the mine.

Sam had been gazing out of the other window, lost in thought. "Huh," she said, suddenly paying attention. "Are those Christmas decorations on the street lights?"

I looked up at them. "Well, it _is_ December."

Sam pointed the camera outside. "It's so weird to see decorations up in summer; it totally doesn't feel like Christmas. Christmas is supposed to be cold."

Min made a noise, and we looked at her. While we'd be talking she'd obviously been thinking over what I'd told them. "You said 'bad guys', and you said you shot Sean Frost. Who are the others?"

"Well, amongst various riff-raff, Diane," I said. "She would have drowned, she was in the shafts when the water hit."

Bree and Min looked at each other. They both looked very serious. Min glanced back at me over her shoulder as she spoke. "They airlifted her maybe an hour or two ago," she said. "Alive."

My heart skipped a beat, and I felt all the spirits swirl around my skin under my horribly sweaty top. Just fantastic, of course _she_ was bloody alive. "Will she make it, do you think?"

Min made a face. "Unfortunately, it sounds like it."

I took a deep breath and released it slowly. Not if I had anything to do with it, she wouldn't.

Sam swung the camera around at Min. "Unfortunately?"

Bree put her chin on the corner of the passenger seat as she looked back at us. "Min used to work in their Sydney office a year or so ago. She was fucking miserable." She brightened as she said, "Until I rescued her."

In the rear view mirror I could see Min's lips and she was smiling. "Actually, she blackmailed me. Now I'm not just miserable, I'm _poor_ and miserable."

Bree rolled her eyes. "You sound like your mum," she said to Min, and then turned to me. "Are you going to kill her?"

For a moment I thought Bree meant Min's mother and I was very confused until I realised she meant Diane Frost. I glanced across at Sam's camera, which was pointed at me. "Maybe," I said. "But she's not who I'm worried about that moment."

"That angry blonde chick with the little kid from the Kimberley," Bree said. "Amanda, wasn't it?"

I nodded, and then I had a thought. I didn't really feel like Amanda was the type of person to mistreat a child, but then I hadn't expected her to betray us, either. "When you saw Amanda with Blanket, did Blanket look alright?"

Bree gave me a weird look. "Yeah, I'm not going to get used to that name," she said, and then tried it. "'Blanket'…" She made a face. "Sounds like something a crazy celebrity would call their kid, you know? Anyway, yeah, she looked okay. She wasn't upset or anything. Amanda got her a milkshake while she was waiting for the guy to arrive." Something occurred to her. "Oh! There were signs everywhere near that café about scenic helicopter flights and did you see there's a helipad on that ship? So you could do that."

I frowned. "What, hijack a tourist helicopter in the middle of a city?"

Sam looked like she agreed with me. "It's probably safer to just buy a boat, isn't it?" she asked. "I mean, how expensive can just a regular one be?"

"Well, you can just burn your money if you want to," Bree said, "but the other option is just plain old renting a boat from Cronulla Marina. There's dozens of them."

 _That_ was good news. At least I wasn't going to have to hijack anything or spend some ridiculous amount of money on a boat I'd probably only use once. I didn't feel very comfortable with the prospect of going out onto that ship without the guns Macca was bringing over for us, but I'd have to make do. It wasn't as if I wasn't used to using whatever weapons were available, anyway.

I fanned the neck of my long-sleeved top again, trying to get some air into it. The aircon in Min's car wasn't working.

"You must be pretty sick if you have a fever," Bree observed. "What is it? Just the 'flu? Or something more interesting?"

"Bree," Min said simply.

"What? Look at her." She gestured at me. "Obviously she's really hot."

Sam just stared at Bree for a second, and then burst out laughing. "Totally with you on that one!" she said, filming my face which I assumed was bright red, both from being actually very warm and the turn the conversation had taken. "It's definitely _way_ more interesting than the 'flu. We'll show you when we get inside when she can take her top off. Then you can see how hot she is _and_ how interesting her condition is."

Bree squinted at both of us. "Lara Croft, topless in my girlfriend's bedroom. My life just got so much more awesome."

"Do I get a say in this?" Min wondered aloud.

Bree scoffed. "As if you'd throw her out!"

Min locked eyes with me in the rear view and in the process accidentally hit the curb with one of the wheels. "We're here," she announced, and then promptly got out. She'd already popped the boot and taken my case out before I was able to insist that I do it myself. "This way," she said, handing Sam her case and leading us towards a tired-looking block of flats.

Min's flat was ground floor, and she had her own little courtyard that we had to unlock the gate to get into. The courtyard had a cast iron table and chair that were half-rusted and covered in spider webs. I wondered if the seats contained those horribly venomous spiders Sam kept spouting random facts about.

Once we were inside, it was clear that her courtyard was the biggest part of her flat. Inside, there was just a tiny living room that led through a slender doorway into the bedroom. The only window was over the kitchenette that faced the courtyard, so we couldn't see anything at all until Min turned the light on. The rooms were so narrow I had to be very careful not to get too close to anyone. Four people in that tiny flat made it seem crowded. I had to admit I found it a little claustrophobic; Min wasn't exaggerating when she said she didn't have much money.

I had been busy feeling guilty and a little embarrassed about the fact I _had_ money and they didn't, when I noticed the wall of the living room. It was plastered with posters from ceiling to floor. I had thought they were photos at first, but when I walked up to them, I could see they were digitally painted. Some of them were natural scenery like beautiful coral reefs, others were futuristic cities, huge empty warehouses just packed full of paraphernalia… the list went on. Each of them felt epic, like they were part of some adventure or the set of a movie. I came across a picture that was obviously an ancient East Asian pagoda.

While I was examining it, I could feel someone standing behind me and watching me. "What do you think?" Min asked me. She sounded like she already knew how I'd answer.

I touched the paper, just to make sure it _wasn't_ hand-painted. "This is incredible," I said. "It looks _just_ like something you'd find in Japan. Every little detail is perfect." I stood back. "They're _all_ incredible. This is what you left mining for?" I looked back at her.

She smiled wistfully at her wall. "Yeah," she said. "I want to be an environmental concept artist for games."

Sam was filming across the wall and I stepped out of the way for her. "Well, I'd hire you," she said. "I don't think my family has anything to do with gaming but if I find out we do, I'll pull some strings."

Min didn't look like she expected anything would come of Sam's offer. "Thanks," she said anyway.

Bree came up beside Min and wrapped her arms around Min's waist. "Isn't my girlfriend awesome?" she said, her voice muffled by Min's hoodie.

Min ruffled her curls. "Pity the pictures aren't real," she said. "I'd paint you the most beautiful big house so I didn't have to squish you into this hovel."

I looked over at Sam, who was surreptitiously filming them. She smiled warmly at me over the LCD; we already had our beautiful big house. Thinking about it, I had this unexpected pang of homesickness; I hadn't felt that way since boarding school. I couldn't wait for all of this to be over so Sam and I could just go home to our house and spend the winter cuddled up in front of the fire. I yawned, thinking about it.

Min noticed. "My bed's in here," she said, disentangling herself from Bree and showing us into her bedroom. It seemed really cluttered, but it wasn't so much from being messy as it was from just being really much too small for all her furniture and belongings. It was clear she'd downsized, and recently.

Her bed was actually half-covered with what looked Bree's clothes. She scooped them off the bed and dumped them in the wardrobe which was already overflowing, also with clothes that clearly weren't hers. She managed the close the door, anyway.

We all stood in the tiny room for a moment. They looked like they were waiting for something, but I was too tired to try and figure out what it was.

"Well, if you need anything, let me know," Min said eventually. "I think there's some orange juice in the fridge, and I live walking distance from Subway."

"Thanks," I said, eager to get the horribly warm top off and lie down. "I think we'll just try and get some sleep." I had half-lifted it from my stomach as they exited, forgetting completely what was underneath it until Bree shrieked and stopped dead in her tracks.

"Holy _fuck_ …" Min said, gaping at my stomach with her brow lowered.

I looked down at my skin. It was _covered_ in spirit paintings, and some of them were moving. Since my top was already halfway off, I pulled it over my head and dropped it on my case. There was nothing scandalous about my sports bra. "Oh, that's right," I said. "This is my 'flu'."

Sam squinted at me. "Did you just make a pun?" she asked me, while Min and Bree stared open-jawed at my skin. "Like, 'flew'-'flu'?" she flapped her hands like wings. "Because if you did, I'm totally proud of you."

"Sorry to disappoint you, but it was an accident," I said with a grin, and then turned back to Min and Bree. They just looked completely lost, so tried to explain. "My first one was a pigeon." My explanation didn't look like it had helped them much.

Bree went to get a bit closer to me for a better look, but Min held her back. "Are they dangerous?"

"Well, they are Australian," Sam said. "What are the odds?"

By the time I'd explained to Bree and Min what they were, Bree's eyes were practically bulging out of her head. "They're _awesome_ , that's what they are. This is fucking amazing, I wish I could take a photo."

"I hear you," Sam said, gesturing at her camera which was pointed squarely at Bree and Min and away from me.

Min didn't look like she'd made the same assessment. Her eyes were a little narrowed as she looked at me.

"What is it?" I asked her.

She looked like she wasn't going to say anything for a moment, but then she just shook her head. "If this Amanda girl was worried about transferring them to people as you said, then there must be something to be worried about."

Bree rolled her eyes and shoved Min in the stomach. "You worry too much," she said. "You need to learn to chill."

Amanda _had_ mentioned having some trouble with them. They'd been so helpful so far that I didn't really know what to make of Amanda's concern, though. To Min, I said, "I suppose I'll find out."

Min gave me a long stare, but eventually nodded. Her eyes darted between my own and my breasts. Despite the bra, I blushed. Min shoved Bree back. "There, there's your topless Tomb Raider in my bedroom," she said, and flashed me charming smile as she bundled Bree out of the bedroom. "Come on, let's let them sleep."

"Yeah, but I can't _touch_ her, so what's the point?" Bree complained as she let Min drag her out.

Sam grinned at me, too. "Funny, I was thinking the same thing..."

I smiled wryly at her, sitting on the bed to undo my boots. "Probably for the best," I said. "I'm way too tired to do anything just now."

Sam laughed once, kicking off her own boots. "I'm going to hear that a lot, aren't I?" She was watching them swim around on my stomach. After a few moments she asked, "What do they feel like?"

"Like creatures moving around on me." I touched one of them with the tips of a couple of fingers, and it didn't react at all. I was just their host, I supposed. Like the cave.

"I wish I could feel them," she said, watching me as I undid my bra and discarded it.

I smiled. "I wonder what 'them' you mean," I said, and she raised an eyebrow at me.

It was odd when she undressed; it wasn't very often anymore that I was half-naked in a room with her and not touching her. It reminded me of back before I'd told her I was attracted to her and had to be content with just stealing glances at her when she wasn't looking. At least I was too tired for it to bother me very much.

The bed was only a double, and that meant it was difficult for me to lie next to Sam without touching her. We tried a number of configurations, and eventually settled on piling Bree's clothes down the middle of the bed between us. There were enough of them so that we couldn't inadvertently touch while we were asleep. Unfortunately it also meant I couldn't see her.

"There's something naughty about this," Sam's voice said from the other side of the clothes wall after I'd plugged in all our electronics and settled into bed. "So," she said playfully at the bottom register of her voice. "What are you wearing?"

I laughed. "You're hopeless," I said. "Go to sleep."

I assume she did and pretty quickly, because she didn't say anything else. I had settled back into the lovely soft pillows with a coral reef-print duvet cuddled up around me, expecting to do exactly the same.

But I didn't.

There was no reason for me not to have slept. Min and Bree were being so quiet making themselves comfy on the sofa in the living room, and for once Sam wasn't even snoring. I was tired, I was sore and I was in a nice soft bed.

It was just every time I started to nod off, I would feel something rushing past me and I would startle awake. Several times the spirits would move on my skin and disturb me, too.

However, the worst feeling was one that I was already familiar with: the feeling that I was being watched. It was like I was surrounded by dozens of people and they were all staring down at me, silent and ominous. The weight of their attention was so palpable that I kept having to sit up and check there was no one there. When I did, the shadows in the corners of the ceiling tricked my eyes and I thought I could see creatures moving about in them. If it hadn't have been so warm out, I'd have put the duvet over my head like I did when I was a little girl.

By the time I could hear Min and Bree moving around again in the living room, I could have cried with how frustrated I was. I didn't think I'd slept for more than about half an hour in total. I ached all over and all I wanted was just to be unconscious.

I rolled over and checked my phone; it was nearly seven in the evening. We should probably get going if we wanted to take a look at this mysterious cargo ship tonight. I returned to my back and stared at the ceiling. Given the option, I wouldn't have attempted anything on half an hour of sleep, especially after the enormous day we'd had yesterday. I didn't think I actually had the option, though. I didn't really know what Amanda was planning, and I doubted lying there for another few hours would make any difference to how I felt. Technically I'd only missed one night of sleep; I'd done that frequently at uni. I could probably push through it just this once, as uncomfortable as it was.

I woke Sam up and dressed slowly, guarding all my sore muscles. What I did need to find, though, was some way to manage how tired I was.

Sam was watching me. When I nearly fell over putting my boots on, she went to her suitcase and returned with a packet which she threw at me. Luckily, I wasn't so gone that I didn't easily catch it. I looked down at the packet. "No-Doze," I read, and then looked at her.

She put her hands up. "Just saying," she said. "Five does the trick. I'm out of codeine, but I have paracetamol if you need it."

I looked down at the packet in my hands. In the absence of actual sleep, I supposed these would have to do. I popped out three and swallowed them, and then let Sam get the painkillers for me, too. After I was dosed up and I'd fitted all the gear I thought I might need in my daypack or on my belt, I tried to stretch a little.

Sam was checking the memory cards in her camera, but I could tell she was also watching me. "Is it the spirits?" she asked. I nodded. She looked me up and down, and there was no humour at all visible on her face. "Sweetie, are you sure you're going to be okay to check the ship out tonight? I don't mean to sound rude, but you look _terrible_."

Her voice was really gentle and I would have paid any large amount of money to just be able to let her put her arms around me so I could nap on her shoulder. However, now I knew what the spirits could do, I was even more determined to make sure I never transferred even one of them to her. I kept my arms to myself.

When we opened the door to the living room, Min and Bree saw me and looked at each other.

Min was probably going to spare me her assessment, but Bree said, "Fuck, Lara, you look like death."

Sam snorted, but I just nodded at Bree. "I feel like death, too," I said. "Let's hope I don't make it there."

While Min was driving Sam and I back to Cronulla Marina, I said to Sam, "You don't have any sleeping pills in your pharmacopeia, do you?"

She shook her head. "Those are really hard to get now, especially with my medical history."

I made a face. "Okay," I said. I would have to figure something else out.

Once we'd secured a hire boat and paid to have the petrol tank filled, I helped Sam onto it and then turned back to Bree and Min. "Thanks, you two," I said. "You've been really great, and you hardly know us."

"Yet," Min said with a half-smile, and kicked the nose of the boat away from the jetty. "Don't get killed. I've already got enough stuff in my flat without being stuck with those suitcases, too."

Bree waved, but she was already turning back to Min. "Where will we put Blanket after they rescue her?" she asked her. "Maybe I should go back to my brother's and get that blow-up bed."

I had to laugh at her optimism as I fiddled with the controls on the boat to orient myself to them. I wasn't sure I would be doing anything other than having a look to see what was going on and what we were up against tonight. There were just far too many unknowns, and I was so tired.

"' _In an emergency, life jackets are located underneath the rear seats'_." I glanced back over my shoulder as I reversed away from the jetty. Sam was reading the safety card. She flipped it over. "It doesn't specify what an emergency is," she pointed out. "If I get shot, I'm going to put one of these life jackets on and then you can sue the company after I die because the card doesn't say they can't be used in _that_ kind of emergency."

I had to steer around a great deal of other leisure boats to get out of the marina. "Sometimes it's really obvious you grew up in America," I said. "If you got shot and died, raising some tedious negligence claim is the very last thing I would feel like doing."

"...Just in case I still wondered if you were a gold-digger," she said, smiling, and then shrieked as I accelerated and the nose of the boat pulled upwards and hit a wave square-on. "Good thing I read the safety card!"

As we sped further out to sea and the lights of Cronulla disappeared behind us, the weight of what we were actually doing settled on me. This wasn't like a mine where we could just disappear and run away. On a ship, we were surrounded by ocean.

And we had _no idea_ what we'd find on that ship.


	27. Chapter 27

Aside from the fact it was anchored just outside territorial waters, the first indication something was awry was that the ship wasn't running navigation lights.

It was so dark that the ocean was just this vast black carpet around us, lapping at the side of our speedboat. Beside the cargo ship, the only sign there was anything there at all was that half the sky was blocked out. Way up near the railing there was some lighting on the deck, but I really had to crane my neck to see that high, it was _huge_. At the waterline, everything was pitch black.

"Just in case we didn't already think they were hiding something," I said to Sam as we pulled up to it. "Let's find a way on."

Sam tapped her camera and my initial reaction was to lean in beside her and watch her scan the side of the ship using Night Vision mode. I stopped myself at the last second; I'd become so used to the feeling of creatures moving across my skin that I'd almost forgotten they were there. My awful fatigue didn't help, either. Thinking about that made me yawn.

"These caffeine pills don't do anything," I complained quietly to Sam as she panned over the stern.

"The magic number is five, Lara, trust me on that one."

While she was doing that I leant my head against the canopy for just a moment…

"There!" I jumped, looking up at Sam, my heart thumping. God, I was _so_ tired. In the dim green glow from the LCD I could see she was smiling. "There's a ladder on the side that looks like it might be one of those retractable ones. If you get the rope around it you can probably pull it down."

She was right. Once I'd pulled it down and tethered out boat to it I went up first, just in case someone had heard us and was waiting at the top. The ladder seemed to go on _forever_ , and by the time I reach the top of it, my muscles were shaking. I shook them out and peeked over the edge.

The deck was well-lit, and it took a few moments for my eyes to adjust. When they did, all I saw was vast stretches of empty deck, broken into six cargo holds. Over each there were huge metal scoops that looked like those I'd seen in Processing at the Frost International mine. The stern end of the ship had a multi-storey facility with a long crane on top of it. Someone had painted over the logo – was the ship stolen, perhaps? –and the text underneath it read _North-South Coal Haulage._

When I was actually certain that it _wasn't_ an ambush and there actually wasn't anyone waiting to pounce on us, I climbed up and waved down at Sam. Once we'd pulled ourselves up we quickly ran across the deck between the mouths of two of the cargo holds.

"Where is everyone?" Sam wondered, looking about us. "It's completely dead up here. Maybe it's abandoned?"

Over the smell of diesel and salt water, there was something else. I took a deep lungful of it and immediately recognised what it was. "Smell that?" I asked Sam. "Spaghetti Bolognaise. It's tea time."

While I was peering around the corner of one of the hold, Sam sighed. I glanced back at her, and she said, "Great. Now I'm _hungry_." Despite how awful I was feeling, that did make me chuckle.

I couldn't see anyone on deck, but without any sort of weapon at all I didn't feel good about just rushing out into plain sight. Instead, I turned my attention to the cargo hold we were beside. It was the very top of what must be very big and very deep storage area. There was a door on it, but when I pulled it open it was just an operation console. "What do you suppose is in here?" I wondered aloud, and then began to fiddle with the buttons. None of them responded at all, and that's when I noticed a keypad beside the console that was lit up. The controls were locked.

"Whoa…" I up at what Sam was looking at; there was a bright fluorescent light shining out of the lid of the hold. "Who needs light _that_ bright? It's like a science lab or something."

I'd climbed on top of the hold to see if I could somehow force the door open when the spirits started to try and crowd around my back. They needn't have, though, because I already knew something was wrong. "Do you feel that?" I looked down at Sam.

She frowned, focusing on it. "Yeah, I do, kind of." She looked up at me. "Maybe the Slave Stone is in there?"

I looked down at the door of the cargo hold. The reaction the spirits were having certainly suggested it was there, but honestly it didn't feel the same as the stone had. I climbed down on my hands and knees on the door and put my ear against it. I could hear some sort of ventilation system, but nothing else.

After a minute or two I gave up trying to figure out what was inside, and stood up. "Until we have that code, all I can tell you is what's _not_ in there," I said to the camera. "Coal."

Sam turned the camera towards the multistorey facility. "Ten bucks says the answer's in that somewhere," she said.

As we moved cautiously between the holds, I could hear the hum of conversation and laughter. In the facility up the back of the carrier, a door was open and that was the source of the delicious smell. Or, it would have been delicious if I hadn't felt so terrible. In the state I was in, the smell of food made my stomach turn.

There were a couple of men outside smoking and laughing. They were wearing engineering overalls and didn't have any sort of weapons at all on them, as far as I could see. They just looked like ordinary crew.

I so was busy feeling relieved that I almost didn't notice a figure patrolling the stern. He was dressed in black and I saw a strange shape across his middle. It took me a few seconds to realise it was an AK47. I inhaled sharply and sunk back around the corner again.

Sam was filming me. "What's up?"

I swallowed. "They're armed," I said. "With assault rifles. I suppose that explains why they're anchored _off_ Australian territory." I looked around us for something I could use as a weapon, but everything was bolted down. That made me uncomfortable. "We can't let them see us, or it's over." I sat back against the wall, trying to think. My thighs ached.

Sam disabled the recording LED and filmed around the corner. "I can't believe Amanda brought a _child_ here with these guys," she was whispering. "That is so not cool." She looked back over to me. "Do you think she's in there having dinner, too? Supposing she actually eats, that is."

There were windows a short distance from us, but they were high enough off the deck that I had to pull myself up on the window ledge to get a look inside. My muscles were shaking as peeked over the bottom of one. Inside was a cafeteria and there were maybe fifteen or twenty men eating tea. There wasn't a lot of hair between them, and I couldn't see a white-blonde head at any of the tables. There weren't any women, and there certainly weren't any children.

I dropped back down and dug my thumbs into my poor biceps. "Amanda's not there," I told Sam.

Sam snorted. "Of course she's not. There's _actual people_ in there. People she'd have to talk to."

I grinned at her. Instead of going around the stern where the mercenary was patrolling, we went around the other side. Unfortunately, there was another one patrolling there, too, and this one was wearing a gas mask for some reason. I looked up, and saw a railing above us. My arms shook just thinking about it, but I didn't suppose we had much of a choice. I pointed upward, and Sam nodded.

Once we were up on the railing, we discovered that by accident we'd ended up on the best place in the ship to search the cabins. All of them had a little porthole-style window to the outside, and from the railing we could look into them all with the deck lighting.

I peered into one. There were four beds, a whole jumble of men's clothes and no sign of a woman or a child. As I continued along the railing, most of the rooms were similar. "Anything?" Sam whispered, camera pointed at me.

I shook my head. "I think that's all the bedrooms, too. Unless she's somewhere else."

Sam looked up. Above us were three or four more levels, but their windows were spaced differently and I doubted they were cabins. At least the railing between the other levels was connected by suspended stairways so there was no more climbing.

I'd started to look into the rooms on the next level, when I noticed Sam wasn't filming me at all. She had her camera up at the logo that had been painted over. "What do you think this means?" she asked when she noticed I was watching her.

I shrugged, peering into another window. "The ship doesn't belong to whoever it used to belong to, I suppose."

Sam considered it. "You think these guys are pirates?"

I hadn't thought of that. Maybe they were, but then why did the crew sound so cheerful if they were being held hostage? "That wouldn't be my first guess," I said. Sam prompted me to explain what I meant. "Those men outside were just engineers," I said. "They're happy, they're being taken care of. I think the other men are just hired guns." I looked back down at the cargo holds. "The question is who hired them and what sort of cargo are they hired to protect?"

Sam made a face. "You're probably right," she said as I moved along and peeked through another window. I'd come to a line of cabins that were offices. "But I always get suspicious when there's this big group of men by themselves. It always seems to mean they're doing something bad." She laughed once. "I guess they're worried women won't put up with their crap."

I glanced at Sam over my shoulder as I moved to the next window. "In my experience, they're usually doing it _for_ a woman, in one way or another."

Sam was filming me again. "Where's the woman here, though? You think….Amanda?" She looked over the LCD. "No way, right?"

I shook my head. "She couldn't afford to bail herself out of custody, I doubt she could afford to run a ship."

"Maybe she got some sucker to pay for it for her."

I sighed at Sam. "Okay, okay, I get it already. You were right."

Sam turned the camera on herself. "You hear that, people? Lara finally acknowledged I'm right about something _on film_."

I rolled my eyes and looked through another window. "I am so tired and grumpy at the moment. You're lucky I don't just push you off the edge."

Sam scoffed. "Please. As if you'd do that." I narrowed my eyes at her, and she beamed me. "I'm _way_ too cute."

This high up and away from the deck lights, I couldn't see much of any of the rooms. What I could see through that particular window, however, was a chart on the wall that seemed to have route details on it. I squinted at it, but it was too dark for me to be able to read. "We need to get in there," I said to Sam. "There are some details about this ship and where it's going." I felt around the porthole, but it was bolted on. "Come on," I whispered, motioning for her to follow me as we walked around the edge of the walkway…

…nearly right into a mercenary. Fortunately he had his back turned and was whistling to himself. Sam nearly collided with me as I stopped suddenly, but managed to pull herself back around the corner and I followed her.

I took a few deep breaths, my heart hammering in my chest. That was _too_ close. I never would have done something that stupid in Yamatai, or Greece, or even in the mine for that matter. I should _not_ be doing anything while I was this tired. I should be tucked at home in bed and not nearly getting us both killed.

It was too late to leave now, though. Feeling around in my pockets, I took out my little pocket knife, opened the blade and then stared at it in my hands. I'd held it on someone once, but that person hadn't been a trained fighter holding an AK47.

I peeked around the corner again. The mercenary had wandered over to the closed railing, and was leaning over it. "Hey!" he called. He had an American accent.

There was a shout from below him. "What's up?"

"If they're serving those custard pastry things could you grab a couple for me? They'll all be gone if I wait until the end of my shift."

Sam and I looked at each other. She was smirking, and motioned for me to move aside so she could pass. I did, and accepted the camera from her as she did so. She looked up at the sky, and then further down the deck, and then snuck across the corridor in a beeline toward the mercenary.

I inhaled, and looked either way down the corridor. _Sam_ , I thought, what are you doing? You're going to get yourself killed!

While the mercenaries were chatting to each other, I watched her creep right up against the man with my heart in my throat. The nose of his rifle was inches away from her head. God, I could barely watch. I was sure that any second I'd see her be shot down in front of me; it was too much.

After a few moments, she returned to me in one piece and _not_ riddled with bullet holes. I was torn between wanting to hug her and wanting to yell at her. I couldn't do either.

She held her hand out. "Give me your compass," she said. I felt around in my pocket and gave it to her without a second thought. Not wasting a single moment, she lobbed it down the other side of the corridor. It clattered really loudly on the metal grate.

The guard stood up straight, his conversation dying mid-sentence on his lips. "Hey!" he called out, checking his gun and then jogging up the other end of the corridor and around the corner. "Who's there? This is out of bounds!"

"Come with me!" Sam whispered, rounding the corner and leaning over next to the closest door. I shakily filmed her as she bent next to the lock and jingled a keyring.

"Did you get that from him?" I asked, glancing up to see if he was on his way back.

She winked at me, and then her key fit into the lock and we hurriedly stepped through the door.

When it was closed, I leaned against it and took a few deep breaths. "You scared me."

She was already filming around the dark room. "Yeah?" She didn't sound too concerned about it. "Well, welcome to my life. I've just learnt that I close my eyes, take a deep breath," she mimed doing it and then relaxed , "and repeat to myself, 'Lara knows what she's doing, Lara knows what she's doing'." She looked back at the room. "And it's true. You do. I don't need to worry."

After that close call with the mercenary, I wasn't completely certain I even trust myself that much at the moment.

The map I'd see through the window was stuck to the wall, and there were various markers on it. By the look of it, the ship was on its way to China. There were various markers along the route and we were positioned on one now.

"What's that?" Sam asked, leaning in towards the board as close as she dared to get to me. "Why are there pins over the middle of Australia? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure ships don't travel well on land."

I shook my head. There was one over Windjana Gorge, and one over Wollemi National Park. Well, as long as we had footage of it, we could figure out the details later.

I straightened as Sam went to explore the rest of the room, feeling unsettled.

"Lara," Sam said in a strange voice, and I looked over to her. She was holding up a half-empty bottle of nail-polish with Dora the Explorer on it. It had been spilt all over the desk.

At that point, I did turn on the light momentarily so I could see what else there was. In the dark, I hadn't noticed a doorway on the edge of the room. I looked through it I saw an en suite with Melon-scented shampoo and a loofah.

Sam filmed over my shoulder. "Either the captain is a total metrosexual or we just found our leading lady."

"This is Amanda's room," I said, noting the long-sleeved tops drying on one of the towel-racks. "But she can't be the captain, can she? Captains have to be on the ship the whole time, they're in charge of it."

Sam shrugged. "Something tells me this ship doesn't exactly play by the rules." She had been examining the rest of the contents of Amanda's desk, and lifted something up to the light. "This is a pretty nice pen for someone who couldn't post bail." It was solid gold.

I took it from her and frowned down at it.

"Don't take this the wrong way, Lara, but I don't think Macca and Jammas were the only ones who got totally played."

I just couldn't believe it; I kept thinking just how wrong I'd been about Larson and expected to find evidence that Amanda _wasn't_ the person she'd turned out to be. At some point I supposed I was going to have to accept that Amanda was right when she'd said she was nothing like him.

I'd been staring at it when I realised that the pen didn't just have gold casing, _all_ of it was gold. Even the tiny ball that rolled the ink out was. That was odd. I twisted the pen open to take a look inside, maybe thinking I would find something hidden in there, but there was just more gold. Even the inkwell inside was gold. I turned it upside down. Not a single drop of ink rolled out. "It's almost as if an ordinary fountain pen just suddenly turned to gold."

I looked up at Sam, my stomach sinking. We stared at each other for a moment, but Sam spoke before I did. "St. Francis' Folly. That Midas stature thing."

I put the pen back down on the table, trying to think. "You didn't show where it was in the movie, right?"

Sam shook her head. "No, I was pretty careful about that." She made a face. "There was that news coverage of the thing at the hotel nearby, though. People kind of guessed that was us, and there's that blog someone did that supposedly links all the news coverage over those two weeks to the movie."

"I have a bad feeling about this," I said, rubbing my eyes. "And I'm too bloody tired to think straight, so I can't even think _why_ I feel bad."

Sam looked around the room. "Well, the Slave Stone obviously isn't here," she said. "And unless Amanda and Blanket are actually _in_ the cargo hold, they're not here, either."

I walked over to the window and looked out across the cargo holds. "But where are they?"

My eyes rested on the empty helipad.

At that second, the door handle rattled. "Who's there?" a voice shouted.

" _Shit_!" Sam hissed, "the light!"

I looked up at it; I'd forgotten to turn it off while we were searching the table. That was sloppy, very sloppy, and now someone with an AK47 was on the other side of the door and we were trapped in here.

"Find me something heavy or sharp!" I said frantically to Sam, and moved along the shelves and through the desk looking for something, _anything_ , that I could disable the mercenary with when he entered.

There was talking on the other side of the door, and I heard the sound of a key fitting into the lock. "Hide somewhere!" I told Sam, and we were both rushing across the room toward the en suite when the door flew open.

"Freeze!" A voice shouted, and two men in black gas masks stepped in through the door. "Don't move a single fucking inch or I'll shoot you both!"

I probably wouldn't have paid any attention to the order if it weren't for the two AK47s pointed at us. I raised my empty hands, looking directly down one of the barrels. Time slowed for a moment. If I was going to act, it had to be right at that very second.

Before I could do anything, though, the barrels dropped just as suddenly as they had been drawn on us. One of the men looked to the other and then back at me. "You!" he said, clearly recognising me. "That was pretty fucking quick. When did Amanda get back?"

Sam and I looked at each other, hands raised and jaws open. What on _earth_ was he talking about?


	28. Chapter 28

With Sam and I just standing there, the other mercenary raised his gun again for a moment. "Are you sure it's her?" he asked his colleague, as if we weren't even there. "Amanda just left a few hours ago."

"The door was _locked_ , dude," the other man said. "And what else do you make of this?" He gestured at us. "I mean, look. It's _obviously_ her."

They wandered up to us with the guns down, completely at leisure. In their black combat suits they looked completely identical.

One of them walked a slow circle around me like I was made out of wax. "That is so cool," he said, and then pressed the nose of the gun into my back. I heard Sam gasp and for about two seconds I was absolutely certain I was about to be shot dead where I stood. He didn't shoot me, though. He just lowered his gun again and laughed in apparent admiration. "That _is_ _so fucking_ cool."

"Who's this other girl, though? I don't remember the boss saying anything about another one." The other mercenary was face-to-face with Sam, bent forward and squinting into her eyes.

"I'm nobody," she said. Her voice was shaking. "Really."

The men looked at each other. "Creepy," the one in front of Sam said, and then straightened and turned to leave. "Good thing we didn't accidentally shoot them. We'd be shark bait."

"Well, The way Amanda talks about her, I'm not sure she _can_ be shot." The other walked out from behind me and followed his colleague toward the cabin door. "Not that I'd want to test that. Have you eaten yet? Maybe we can get that guy from deck to bring food some up."

They shut the door behind them as they left.

I slowly lowered my arms, my mouth open. Sam looked every bit as disoriented as I was. "What just happened?" she asked me.

I shook my head. Why were they so very impressed by me? I knew I was a celebrity and I supposed I was reasonably attractive, but I wasn't so fit that people should do circuits around me and remark on how amazing I was. Especially right now with these dark circles under my eyes.

Sam leant back against Amanda's desk, her jaw still open. "They could have shot us right there," she said. "But for some reason they don't think we're a threat."

God, my brain was just so fuzzy from lack of sleep. "They recognised me. They _must_ know what kind of threat I am. And yet…" I shook my head again and rubbed my hands across my face. "Why did they act like Amanda would be angry with them if they killed me?"

Sam's eyes had been tracking the air as she thought, and then suddenly she inhaled and stood up from the desk. "Lara," she said, her eyebrows almost meeting, "I think they think that Amanda used the Slave Stone on us."

That Amanda had used… God, of course! I could have smacked myself in the forehead. Of _course_ that was what it was. There couldn't be any other explanation, could there? I should have figured that out myself, I should have, and I might have if hadn't been so bloody tired.

While I was busy feeling incredibly stupid for not realising it myself, Sam's brow lifted and she looked excited.

"What?" I asked her, shifting my weight uncomfortably between each of my aching legs.

"Lara, don't you get it? If they think that you're working for Amanda, they think we're on the same side." She took a step toward me as if she expected me to get just as excited as she was.

I wasn't following her. "Sam, I am just _so_ tired. I can't even think. Spell it out for me?"

She was beaming. "It's simple! We don't need to look around here for some code that may or may not be written somewhere. We can just get them to open the cargo hold for us!"

My first reaction was to be enthusiastic about Sam's idea, but I think that was only because Sam was so endearing when she was excited. Would it work? I tried to decide if I thought it was a good idea or not and came to nothing. Well, historically Sam tended to have rather good ideas, didn't she? She'd picked up quickly on this issue. I decided to trust her.

"Okay, I'll give it a try," I said, hoping that I wouldn't regret it.

Outside on the walkway, the mercenary who Sam had stolen the keys from had gone back to whistling and casually patrolling the area, still completely unaware his keys were gone. I took a deep breath and walked straight up to him. He double-took as I approached but his AK47 stayed flat against his chest. I didn't feel comfortable while he had it, and I was too tired to beat around the bush. Either this was going to work or it wasn't.

"Give me your gun," I said, and held out my hand.

He looked from my hand to my face. "Uh, I don't think I can do that."

"Amanda's specific instructions were that I was to take 'all actions necessary' to complete my assignment," I said clearly, hoping that whatever Amanda had said about me was suitably intimidating. "Now give me your gun, or I will need to remove it from you."

Without being able to see his face, I had no idea what he was thinking. I did see him glance behind me at Sam, though, and that made me _really_ nervous. This close to him, I would usually have been able to disarm him before he shot me if he _did_ decide to try anything. However, I was slower than usual and Sam wasn't directly behind me.

God, he was _so much bigger_ than me. I didn't even come up to his shoulders.

He spent a long few seconds considering his options, and then slung the strap over his head and just handed it over. Looking down at it, for a few moments I wondered if he _had_ actually shot me and I was hallucinating. It was _that_ easy? I glanced over my shoulder at Sam whose eyes were still as wide as saucers. I felt much the same way she did.

Now that he didn't have the gun, I had nothing to lose. I turned back to him. "Open the cargo hold."

I could see the mercenary's throat bob under his mask as he swallowed nervously. "I don't know the code," he said. "None of us do."

I swore internally; he was obviously telling the truth. Of course only Amanda knew the code. I stared at him, at a loss as to what to do next. I knew I should say something but I just couldn't think what, and the more I worried about the fact I wasn't saying anything, the more I was completely unable to speak. He looked very unnerved my silence and I think I actually saw him shrink backward a little. "I don't," he repeated, actually sounding a little scared. I had never come across a single man who was afraid of me before, at least not before he'd seen me in action.

In the end, Sam came to my rescue. "Whatever, we'll open it ourselves," she said. "Come on."

I gave the mercenary one last look, and then followed Sam down the corridor in the direction she'd thrown my compass earlier. I collected it off the floor as we left.

We passed two more mercenaries on the way back to cargo hold. Both of them stopped and stared at me, but neither said anything or made any attempt to attack me despite the fact I was armed. Whatever Amanda had told them about me must have been quite the story; the way they looked at me you'd have thought I had three heads. It was unsettling.

Sam didn't lead us back to the cargo hold. As she climbed onto the ladder, I looked back toward it. "Aren't we going to…?"

She frowned at me. "Uh, no," she said. "Why? Neither of us knows the code, Amanda's not going to be here for ages and _you_ are absolutely wrecked and completely useless."

She'd not meant it cruelly, but I felt stupid. I was _so_ slow, she was right. I did need sleep.

We climbed back over the ladder and headed back down to the boat. It was a huge relief when we finally pulled away from the side of the ship and headed back toward Cronulla Marina.

Finally relaxing somewhat, I gave the AK47 to Sam to hide somewhere. She gingerly took it from me like at any moment it might suddenly go off in her hands and stowed it underneath her seat with the lifejackets.

We'd been quiet for a few minutes while I tried both to stay awake and not capsize us. The lights on the speedboat were frustratingly inadequate and I could hardly see anything except what was right in front of the boat. To make matters worse, my eyes were playing tricks on me and I kept thinking I saw huge waves approaching.

Sam had been gazing up at the stars with a deep frown on her face before she spoke. "Seriously," she said. "What the hell is going on with that ship?"

I took a deep breath and exhaled. Even just steering the boat my arms were shaking. "None of it makes much sense to me," I said. "Although, given I've passed the forty-eight hour mark with heavy exercise and no sleep, that's not really very surprising, is it?" I smiled wryly back at her.

Sam was watching me. "I shouldn't have let you go out to the ship," she said. "I could _see_ how bad you looked and I let you convince me you were fine. You said it before to Min, you can't see yourself. I can."

I would have put a comforting hand on her if I hadn't been steering the boat, and if I wasn't reasonably certain the spirits would migrate to her. "How about you save the blaming yourself for when something actually goes wrong?" I suggested gently.

She nodded and looked away from me for a moment. "Why does Amanda need a ship?" was her next question. "A whole ship, full of guys with guns."

"I don't think we're going to understand what's going on without seeing what's in the cargo hold," I said. "That much I _am_ sure of. And we can't get into that without Amanda."

Sam was still thinking. "Maybe we could buy a cheap little security camera thing and stick in somewhere where it can catch Amanda entering the code?"

I raised my eyebrows. Even in the state I was in, I could see that was a potential solution. "Actually, that's not a bad idea," I said. "But before we buy security cameras or do anything: bed." I made a face. "Not being able to figure this out is driving me crazy, and I can't decide if it's because we just don't have enough information, or because I'm so bloody out of it I'd have no hope of figuring _anything_ out just now." I stared forward at the lights of Sydney growing as we approached them. "So presumably Amanda has told her men that she's enslaved me. I can't even imagine how she thought that was going to happen, or _when_ it was going to happen, or even why on earth she'd actually do it."

Sam didn't look as surprised as I did. "Well, the 'why' isn't exactly a mystery. You're an A-bomb in a tank-top."

"She's got dozens of trained, armed, experienced mercenaries on that ship. She doesn't know that I…" I paused, trying to remember the footage on _Tomb Raider_ and the news coverage of Yamatai. There was probably quite a lot of information available if Amanda had been looking for it. "Okay, so maybe she _does_ have some idea about me. It doesn't explain how she thought everything was going to work, or why those men looked at me like I was some sort of monster." I put my hand to my forehead and then rubbed my eyes. "God… what a headache. I almost _prefer_ the zombie centaurs and thunderstorms."

We agreed not to talk about it anymore until after I'd slept, because rehashing everything over and over with no solution was 'driving me totally nuts', as Sam put it.

Back in Cronulla, Min and Bree hadn't even left the marina. When we docked and Sam took out her phone to call them, we could actually hear Bree's ringtone from inside a car parked in the in the cul-de-sac right next to the jetty. It was a good thing they were close, because I didn't have anything I could conceal with AK47 with and there were drunk teenagers _everywhere_.

When we walked into the light, Bree came rushing up to me. "Fuck!" she said at length. "Look at that gun! That's _so_ illegal!"

I let her take it from me, but not because I thought it was a good idea: if I hadn't, I could tell she would have wrenched it out of my hands and I didn't want to cause a scene. "Not much about that ship is legal, if you ask me."

Bree posed with the gun. "Hey, Min, check me out!" So much for not causing a scene… I looked anxiously around us to try and determine if anyone had seen her.

Min deadpanned. "Good to see you two are still alive," she said to Sam and I, strolling over from the car. She easily plucked the gun out of Bree's hands and gave it back to me, dropping an apologetic kiss on the top of her head in the process. "Don't let her touch the gun," she told me. "She can't even play first person shooters."

"I could if I actually wanted to," Bree muttered, and then turned her attention to us. "Not that a huge gun isn't really awesome, but why don't you have the little girl? I thought you were going to save her. I even told my cousin to drop around some toys tomorrow."

Min saw how much difficulty I was having hiding the gun, and pulled her thick hoodie over her head and tossed it at me. She was wearing a singlet underneath, and she wasn't wearing a bra. In the process of noticing that, I didn't manage to catch her hoodie and it flew past me onto the grass. I hurriedly picked it up while the other three laughed. Bundling the rifle up in the folds of it, my face flushed a deep red.

"Whoa, you _must_ be tired!" Min laughed as I straightened and pushed my fringe off my burning cheeks. I _was_ tired, I'd never ordinarily be so distracted by someone in a singlet. I wasn't sure what was so terribly distracting, anyway; Sam's were bigger.

I did glance sideways at Sam, and felt horribly guilty when I saw a flash of concern pass over her face. Here I was accidentally checking out some other girl, and Sam was _worried for my welfare_. I was such a terrible human being.

In all the confusion, I did realise that some time ago Bree had actually asked me a question. "I couldn't rescue Blanket because Amanda and Blanket weren't there," I told them, trying to push aside my embarrassment. "I don't know when they'll be back, but I think it will be some time."

"Which is great," Sam announced. "Because I need food and in case you couldn't tell by the enormous bags under her eyes and the fact she can't even catch a sweater, Lara needs sleep."

There was still the problem of _how_ I was going to sleep, given that I'd made two very serious attempts at it and failed both times. "If I even _can_ sleep," I said to Sam. "Are you sure you don't have anything that resembles a sleeping pill?"

Sam was already looking past me. "Huh," she said, and then grinned. "I can see something just as good," she said. I didn't know what she meant, so I turned my head to look where she was. There were group of teenagers getting drunk on the lawn of an apartment building near where Min had left her car. "Check it out," she said. "They totally don't need _all_ that alcohol. I'm sure they could spare some. Go on."

"Me?" I asked. "Why me? You're the smooth-talker."

"Hell, I'd give you _all_ my alcohol if I had any," Bree said. "You're famous _and_ you're hot." She looked at Sam. "No offense. You're hot, too, but you're not Lara Croft."

Sam just looked amused. "Yes, you," she told me. "Go on."

I sighed at her, and then turned around and walked up to the group. My heart was pounding as much as it would be if I were about to go into combat.

When they saw me approaching them, several of them leaned together and whispered. One of the boys threw his hands in the air in a victory 'v' and yelled, "Tomb Raider!" at the top of his lungs so loudly his voice was raw. "Yeah!" Sam was right: he clearly did _not_ need to drink any more alcohol.

I tucked my hair behind my ears with the tips of my fingers. "Sorry to bother you all," I said. "But can I buy that vodka from you?" I pointed to the almost full 500ml bottle in the centre of their circle.

In the end, all it took to 'buy' the bottle was several pictures with me making a pistol shape with my hands and striking various poses while their phones flashed. I did so reluctantly, feeling awkward. "Thanks," I said to them afterwards, holding the bottle up. "I appreciate it."

I walked away from the group, and I'd only made it a few metres when they all started shrieking and talking excitedly about what had just happened.

Of course, Sam had her camera up and pointed at me. She waved innocently as I returned. I leant in close to the lens, brandishing the bottle of vodka at it. "Bottoms up," I said, and then unscrewed the cap and drank deeply.

Bree cheered. "Yeah! Hey, it's Friday night. You want to go somewhere? Lemons with a Twist is over now but there will probably be somewhere else we can hang."

Sam stared at her. "Oh, we are _so_ going hard when this whole thing is over," she said. "You can take us on a tour of Sydney's clubs."

Min sighed at Bree and then looked back at the two of us. "Lara, I'll drop you back at my place and then the rest of us can go grab some dinner somewhere."

When I'd swallowed, I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and coughed. That stuff was _strong_. "That's a nice offer, Bree, but I'm only drinking this to make sure I sleep." To Min, I said, "Sounds perfect."

After we'd piled in the car and turned out onto the highway, Min interrupted whatever Bree was chattering on about to ask a question. "This might seem like a strange observation," she said, "but you have a gun now and you didn't before."

That was right, I thought, remembering the gun. I looked down at it in my lap with the bottle of vodka.

"Did you kill someone for it?" Bree twisted in the seat to look at us. I shook my head, and lifted the bottle up for another big mouthful. "Then how did you get it?"

"She asked him for it," Sam said. Min glanced at me in the rear vision and Bree's eyebrows shot up. Sam's serious face was hilarious. She looked sideways at me and winked. "One of the mercenaries said she could have it if she posed in some photos with him."

I may have accidentally sprayed some vodka out of my mouth. " _Sam_!" I was laughing as I tried to wipe the back of Min's seat.

Sam watched my efforts with a big grin on her face. Through my laughter I realised she also looked a little wistful. She didn't say anything, though, and neither did I. I just passed her the bottle; there was no way it would take whole thing to knock me out. She accepted it and drank.

Bree had started to ask more questions about the gun, but Min shushed her by reaching out and putting a hand over her mouth. Bree must have licked her palm, because Min made a disgusted noise and honked her nose. Before Min put her hand back on the wheel, though, she stroked Bree's cheek momentarily and it was impossible to miss the tenderness. Sam saw me looking, but she didn't say anything and took a very pointed mouthful.

I would have taken her hand if I could have.

After she'd had given the bottle back to me, I answered Bree. "There's something strange happening on that ship," I said between more swigs. "I don't know what it is, but the men all seem to think Sam and I have already been enslaved by Amanda, who by the way they all seem to be working for."

Bree held her hand out, and I gave the bottle to her, as well. She drank thoughtfully from it. "Just imagine what she could make you do if you were her slaves…" She had a cheeky grin on her face

"Bree," Min said at the bottom of her voice.

"Just saying she's kind of cute," Bree said. "And technically if she made you fuck her it wouldn't be cheating because it wouldn't be your choice."

" _Briana!_ " Min glared at her for a second, and looked in the rear vision mirror. "I feel like I need to wear a t-shirt with a disclaimer: 'The opinions and sentiments expressed by the insensitive bimbo next to me do not necessarily reflect those of her girlfriend'."

I was laughing, but I was sure Bree was _way_ off. Amanda had clearly spent a lot of time following my progress especially with regard to the Scion, but I very much doubted she had _any_ of sort of designs on me. She'd made her disdain for me very abundantly clear in every interaction we'd had. "I'm not sure why Amanda would enslave me," I said. "I am dangerous, but there are a lot of dangerous people for hire that would cause her a lot less trouble."

"You did kill her dad," Bree pointed out, and passed the bottle back to Sam. "Maybe it's just revenge."

"She already had plenty of opportunity for that," I said, and watched Sam pour more of it down her throat. "Leave some for me!" I told her and held my hand out for her to return it to me. When she did, I finished it off.

Min dropped me off at her house and gave me the keys, and Sam just ducked in after me to change her clothes.

The alcohol was already in full effect and when I lay back on the bed, I felt as if I was still in the speedboat and rocking on the waves of the ocean. It was a pleasant sensation, and it was nice to finally not be worrying about anything.

When I opened my eyes, Sam was standing over me. She smiled faintly. "Look at you," she said. "Completely smashed and I can't even take advantage of it."

She had changed into an asymmetrical t-shirt and the way it was hanging from one of her shoulders looked really nice. She probably had on the skinny jeans and knee-highs she normally wore with loose tops, as well. I sighed; my girlfriend was _gorgeous._

Sam, I thought, and closed my eyes. My Sam. I was already half-asleep and remembering that time in Greece when we'd got drunk in the hotel room.

I only realised I hadn't replied when she spoke again. "I mean, don't get me wrong," she said, and I opened my eyes to watch her. Her smile had faded. "I _know_ you love me, especially after everything this week. I know. But how tragic is it that I'm happy about the spirit things?" She paused. "Because at least now Bree and Min don't think you're not touching me because you're not into me."

My lips parted. "Sam…" She knew exactly how to break my heart.

She shook her head and looked like she was trying to snap herself out of it. "Oh, my God," she said, "I'm such a train wreck right now, listen to me! I've turned into a pathetic weepy drunk. I'm sorry. We are _so_ past this now, we are. Just ignore me."

She bundled herself out the door, muttering something that might have been 'sweet dreams'. I heard her fall over something in the next room and swear.

Thank god for the alcohol, I thought, and closed my eyes again. Please, _please_ let this be what it takes to finally get me to sleep.


	29. Chapter 29

I didn't sleep. At least, I don't think I did.

I was so relaxed and so comfortable right up until the point that I either half-dreamt or hallucinated there was someone's face inches from mine. I opened my eyes, my heart racing, but I couldn't see anyone. I even used the light from my phone to check before I lay back down.

All it did from that point was escalate and the alcohol made everything just so much worse. I hadn't appreciated earlier that when I snapped awake and opened my eyes everything felt normal again. This time when I sat up, the room spun and the walls melted and I kept feeling like if I let go the flat would disappear and I would be somewhere completely different.

I didn't let go, I fought it. God knows what would have happened if I hadn't. In the process, I lost hours and I don't know how it happened. All I know is that one minute I was lying there sweating so much I had to take my long-sleeved top and my trousers off, and then the next thing I could hear Bree and Min talking softly in the next room and daylight was sneaking under the joining door.

I could hardly open my eyes. I certainly didn't feel at all slept. My _head..._

"Morning, Sunshine," Sam said from beside me. She'd dismantled the clothing barrier and was propped on an elbow and smiling at me. She must have been sleeping, because she'd changed into a big floppy t-shirt.

I groaned. Her friendly greeting was grating; I felt like she was poking fun at me. "I assume you're being sarcastic," I said, and on reflection it was probably rather grumpy. I didn't care much at that point, though. Even talking hurt.

She chuckled. "Lara. You look like a microwaved corpse. I say that in the nicest possible way." She swung her legs off the side of the bed. "You want water?" She paused. "Or maybe _brains_ is more up your alley right now."

"I hate you. I say that in the _nicest possible way_."

She chuckled and disappeared, returning with a big glass of water which she made me drink all of with a couple more painkillers. Just having all that water swirling around in my stomach made me nauseous, as well. With my nausea, the crushing ache in my limbs and the pounding in my head, there was a point at which I wondered if I'd made a horrible mistake by pursuing the Frosts and now Amanda. Maybe this was beyond me.

She sat down beside me again. I could tell from how still she was sitting that she was going to be serious. "I'm sorry I flipped out on you last night," she said. "It's just that watching Min and Bree—"

"I know, I know," I interrupted her, too tired to be having this conversation right now. "I'm sorry, I'm just a bit preoccupied at the moment."

She made a face. "I should be, too," she said. "Like, Amanda's kidnapped this small magical child, there's some dangerous stone thing in her possession and you're covered in these spirits that are obviously messing with you." She exhaled and lay back into her pillow. "And what am I doing? I'm stressing out over whether or not my girlfriend finds me attractive and wants to touch me."

I watched her. Part of me wanted to just turn onto my stomach and announce that I couldn't deal with this right now. I didn't. Instead, I said, "You know, when you said that last night I was just thinking about how beautiful you are." I thought I sounded a little snarky, but Sam didn't notice. She just blushed. _That_ was a rare sight.

"Wow," she said, a delighted smile on her lips. "I can't even tell you how nice it is when you actually say this stuff." Privately I wondered if she would enjoy it as much if I always told her, but I didn't say anything. God, I just felt so awful. I didn't need to make _her_ miserable, too.

She was still talking to me but I have to confess I wasn't really paying attention. My eyelids were just so heavy I was having trouble keeping them open. While I was struggling with that, I had this sudden distressing image of standing slowly up, taking a gun and walking methodically though the flat and shooting everyone, completely unaffected by what I was doing. I gasped and my eyes flew open.

Sam had stopped talking. "Hey, are you alright?"

I looked across at her, terrified I would actually see blood running down her forehead even though I knew it hadn't happened. It was such a relief that aside from looking worried, she was fine. I took a long, slow breath and exhaled. "No," I said, coming to a realisation. "And I don't think I'm going to be okay until after this is sorted and I get these awful things off me. They just won't let me sleep."

"But you were out for like," Sam checked her phone, "maybe seven or eight hours? You still need more?"

I shook my head. "I don't think I slept."

Sam didn't look convinced. "You were out of it when I came back," she said. "I mean, you were, like, twitching and moving a lot but I'm pretty sure you were asleep." I couldn't really explain that, and Sam saw my expression. "Maybe you did sleep and now you're just _really_ hungover?"

"Maybe," I said, and then pulled the pillow over my head and groaned into it for a few seconds. Any subconscious excitement I'd had about finding out what Amanda was up to was completely gone. I just hated the whole thing and wished it would end. This was too much: I just wanted to _sleep._ "God, when will this be over? Can we please kill the bad guys already so we can both just go home and sleep in front of the fire for a few months? I thought this was supposed to be a holiday."

I must have yawned, because Sam did, too, but hers turned into a chuckle. "Yeah, I know what you mean," she said. Something occurred to her. "Hey! I know what will cheer you up," she said, and then rolled over and burrowed around beside the bed, retrieving her phone. "Check _this_ out."

She cycled through a few tabs in Safari, showing me all attention that her culture jam of the Frost International ad had attracted. On YouTube there were well over six million hits, and Sam looked very proud of herself. The last one had a response, and I recognised the hair. "Is that Macca?"

"What?" Sam looked at the screen. "Oh! Oh, yeah. Macca uploaded some video of himself, and you can still see his split lip healing and his bruised nose. It doesn't even matter what he's saying, because it looks like Frost hired goons to beat him up, especially after that footage of the miners I put in the ad."

While she was showing me Macca's video, a notification popped up on her screen. She had her calls on divert and had received a voicemail. "Who's Emi Akita?" I asked her.

She made a face and snatched the phone back, dismissing the message. "My dad's PR-lawyer person. I don't really know exactly what she does, but whenever something goes wrong she gets involved. She called me a few times this morning. Whatever, though. I'm not answering."

"Maybe you should?"

Sam looked at me like _I_ was crazy. "Are you kidding? Like we don't have enough crap to worry about, I don't want to know all the ways in which Frost is trying to sue me right now. We can deal with it when we're back in England."

There was a knock on the door. "I can hear talking!" It was Bree's voice. "Can we come in?" Why not, I thought bitterly. It wasn't like I was going to get any sleep anyway. Bree didn't wait for me to reply before she opened the door. "The shower's through here," she explained, pointing to a door I had assumed lead to a cupboard. She then proceeded to rummage around through the piles of clothes everywhere. She was so cheerful and bouncy and for some reason that _really_ annoyed me.

Min leaned on the doorway. She didn't look very well slept, either. I wondered why.

"You look almost as bad as I feel," I commented.

"Better get me to a hospital," Min fired back without missing a beat, a smirk on her face. "I actually would suggest a doctor, but..." She looked down at my arm; there was a stylised fish swimming around on my skin. "You match my doona cover," she said. I looked down at it; it was the seascape of a coral reef.

Sam snickered. "That's one pick-up line I've never heard before."

Bree found whatever it was she was looking for and stood up, shaking her finger at us. "Don't you guys have fun without me."

With the way I was feeling? "Believe me, I can _promise_ you that is not going to happen."

Bree disappeared into the bathroom. No sooner had the water started than Bree began singing the top ten charts, with particular focus on the most obnoxious pop music that was current on the radio. She was also getting most of the lyrics just slightly wrong.

Sam made a face. "Tell me I'm not that bad." Sam actually had a rather nice singing voice, so I shook my head at her, and then regretted it when the movement when it started pounding again.

Min had a pained expression as Bree tried and failed to hit a high note. "What were you watching?" she asked Sam.

Sam patted the bed and Min stepped over the piles of clothing and sat on the bed beside Sam. When Min swung her legs onto the bed, they were so long they extended almost to the end. Sam was tiny in comparison. The other differences were also apparent; Min sat perfectly still while Sam animatedly talked, Min said very little while Sam filled up every tiny gap in the conversation, and Sam had a very pretty, very petite face while Min... well. She would have made a very pretty man, I thought. But as a woman? Her features were neat and symmetrical, but I don't think I'd have ever described her as 'pretty'. I had a very errant thought about how Sam and Min might look as a couple and what that might involve. It would perhaps have been a rather pleasant thought if I'd had any bloody sleep in the past two nights and I wasn't profoundly hungover.

While I was considering them, Min glanced up at me and we locked eyes. She immediately looked away, and I would have as well if I wasn't so tired. I just felt rather paralysed by how exhausted I was. Sam noticed something pass between us and looked over at me. By then I was at least watching her instead. She winked at me and then went straight back into clicking on YouTube videos.

At that point, through my misery, I decided that turning over and looking at the other wall was probably the best course of action so I did, pulling the duvet around my neck. After I closed my eyes I had all sorts of disjointed thoughts related to my recent observations and at one point the fish on my arm moved and for about five seconds I was absolutely certain it was Min's hand and she was saying, " _Lara_ ," in the bottom register of her voice

I woke up in a panic to someone _actually_ saying my name, but it was Sam. "I don't know if Lara's up to that," she was saying presumably to Min. "And it's kind of this catch twenty-two, because we probably can't get the spirits off her without Old Johnston, and we can't wake him up without the Slave Stone, which we're going to have trouble getting because of the whole spirit thing on Lara."

This sounded like the sort of conversation I should probably be involved in. I managed to force myself to pay attention, but it took a lot more effort than usual. Min was clearly having much more success in thinking clearly than I was. "How does it work?" she asked Sam. "The stone. Maybe we can do it."

Sam shrugged. "You make the person touch it with their skin, and then you have to say this stuff like, 'Listen to me, Listen to me', or something. I saw Diane try to do it to Lara. It's probably something like that to release the person, but we don't know. We'll probably figure it out, though."

When I spoke, I sounded like a pack-a-day smoker at age sixty. "Because it went so well last time we tried to just 'figure it out'," I reminded her.

Sam shot me a look. "Wow, you're totally a barrel of laughs this morning," she said. "I'm beginning to understand Amanda a lot better." She turned back to Min. "But she's right. We don't really know. We were counting on Amanda to figure it out before, but," she sighed, "but now I guess it's on us."

Min spent some time thinking about that, but before she could come to anything Bree emerged from the bathroom in hot pants and a tank-top. She'd obviously been listening to us, because she said, "Well, we could all go to Darwin. Diane's up there in a hospital somewhere."

Min's eyebrow flickered. "She's just after another free trip," she told us. Sam grinned.

Bree pushed her arm playfully. "Am not!" she said. "But one good thing about her being alive is that you can actually ask her."

"I'm sure she's likely to tell us everything if we ask nicely," I said.

Sam threw a pillow at my head. "I don't care how hungover you are," she said, and then reconsidered. "Okay, I do. But Bree's got a point. Diane _would_ know. It's just a pity she's connected to a respirator in intensive care thousands of miles from here."

"I'm sure she'll come back to Sydney eventually," Bree said. "I mean, she's from here. We could just wait."

I wasn't keen on that idea at all. "Waiting means more nights were I don't sleep properly," I said. "It's only been two and look at me."

They did, and the outcome of that suggestion was pretty apparent. It was no-go.

"We don't need to wait for her to come back," Min said. "Frost International headquarters is here on George Street. Both the twins' offices are there."

Bree explained how Min knew that. "Min used to work there. For nearly five years."

Even in the state I was in, I did recall Min mentioning it. "Do you know how we could get inside?"

Min shrugged. "Security is pretty tight," she said. "You scan your ID card to make glass doors open so you can get in. There's always a security guard on the floor watching people. I lost my ID card just before I left and they probably disabled it now anyway, so I don't think there's much hope of us getting in the front door."

"The guard's got to go to the bathroom at some point though, right?" Sam said. "Maybe we could just all chill out the front and wait."

Min snorted. "Yeah, like that's not suspicious," she said, sounding as sarcastic as I had been feeling all morning. "There's a cafeteria on the ground floor that takes deliveries from the rear. I don't really know how that works, but I'm guessing security is pretty strong there, too. Frost has a lot of trouble with Greenpeace."

We were all quiet while we thought for a few moments. Bree was fidgeting uncomfortably and seeing the movements out of the corner of my eye was really annoying. "You right there?" I asked her.

"I'm sorry!" she burst out, a completely guilty expression on her face. She sat there for a second, and then rushed off into the living room. I looked sideways at Min who was just breathing deeply and looking at the ceiling. When Bree came back she was holding her purse. "I'm so sorry!" she said, and then undid her purse and emptied out all of the cards, wads of receipts and small change onto the duvet cover at our feet and leafed through it all.

Min guessed what she was looking for before she did. " _Bree!"_ she half-yelled, reaching out and picking out a black and white card from amongst the mess. "You let me believe that I _lost_ it? I copped so much flack for that!"

Bree winced. "It was the only good pic I have of you with long hair!" she said.

Min sat looking at the card in her lap for a few seconds as if it held some pretty profound memories for her. Then, she quickly showed us: it was a Frost International ID tag. I wouldn't have believed it was Min's if I couldn't have seen _Min Lee_ printed clearly on the bottom, because the photo on it was a picture of a young, pretty Asian girl with long hair and fake eyelashes.

"No way!" Sam said, and snatched it from Min to get a closer look. "No way that's you!"

Bree looked smug. "That's her," she said. "She also used to wear _heels_."

I looked at Min, who had blushed a very deep red. "Shut up, Bree." She tried to take the card back off Sam, but Sam held it out of her reach and then jumped up off the bed. I didn't know what was going on until I saw her retrieve the camera.

Min didn't make any sort of attempt to follow her. "Believe it or not," Sam said as she held the card in front of the lens, "that's _her_." She panned the camera back up to Min. Min did _not_ look impressed.

Sam gave the card back to Min and she tucked it away in the pocket of her hoodie without commenting on what just happened. "I guess this means we can try the front entrance," she said. "If my card even works anymore." She gave Bree a very hard stare, and then took her own turn in the shower.

While Bree and Sam had their heads together whispering about Min's transformation, I pushed myself to sit upright and planted my feet on the floor. I was only wearing knickers and a bra, but it wasn't as if either of them were particularly risqué and we were all women, after all. I leant over and retrieved a change of clothing from my case and turned back toward the other two. "You mind if I have my shower next?" I asked. "Maybe it will wake me up a little."

After we'd all showered and Sam was agonising over which clothing choices said 'I work at Frost and I'm rich', Min drove us into the city centre. The only clothing choice _I_ cared at all about was a pair of heavy black sunglasses that I borrowed from Min.

As it turned out, Sam was the only one of us who looked at all like we had any business being at Frost, even on a Saturday. Even in her 'casual' wear it was like she had 'Trust Fund Child' plastered all over her forehead. We decided unanimously that it would be her who would stand guard at the door and let us know when the security guard wasn't paying attention. She stood there and played with her phone.

While she was doing that and I was standing in the direct sunlight feeling half-awake, sore and awfully sorry for myself, I noticed her brow crease a little as she looked at the screen. I guessed what it was about, and texted her, " _Answer it."_

She turned to look squarely at me, and texted back, " _You're not the boss of me,"_ and very theatrically rejected another call. She was trying to smother a grin.

Reasonably soon after that, she glanced inside and frantically motioned for us to follow her in. Because it was Saturday, the huge glass entrance hall was completely empty and our footsteps echoed off the polished concrete floors and the high ceiling. The security desk was empty, too, and all that stood between us and the Frost International offices were the glass doors that Min had mentioned. The Diamond-Snowflake symbol was painted across the divide of them, and the glass was opaque.

"Huh," Sam commented, and I could hear the grin in her voice. "'Frosted' glass. Very funny."

We all bundled up to the doorway and Min took a deep breath and held her card against the reader. After a few seconds, a little red light appeared above the reader and it beeped three times in quick succession.

"It still might be okay," she said, "sometimes it just does that."

She waved it across the reader a few more times with the same result, and then polished it on her hoodie and tried one last time.

"It looks like it's not working," a male voice commented neutrally.

The security guard had returned from wherever he'd ducked out to and was walking toward us. The first thing I noticed about him was how young he was, the next thing I noticed was that he had a two-way radio and a baton. I didn't have great associations with either of those items, and my breath caught in my throat. Normally I could have relied on myself to say something useful, but I just couldn't _think_.

Min could, though. "Oh, hi," she said, with total ease. "We're just down from operations up north to grab some of the docs for the Kimberley. Everything up there was destroyed and we want to make sure we know what's missing." She wandered up to him and handed him her pass. "It's been a year, two years since I was down here, though. My pass doesn't seem to work. Why is that?"

"Yeah," he began, completely buying her story and accompanying her back toward us to try the reader himself. "These old passes get demagnetized so easily." He ran it in front of the gate but it just beeped at him. "Come over here to the computer, I'll check out your file and make sure everything is okay."

He walked back towards the desk and Min looked at us with panic. My heart was beating so quickly. I looked towards the door and wondered if the security guard could disable it and trap us in here. Everything was glass; maybe we could smash it and break free if he tried to call the police.

While I was trying to imagine how it would all play out, Sam was looking at me with some concern. "I'd ask you if you're feeling okay, but you're wearing _sunglasses inside_." I gave her a dead stare over the rim of said sunglasses.

The security desk wasn't too far from us, and with the acoustics of the hall it was easy to hear the conversation. The guard placed the card in a scanner and leaned at the screen, reading it.

Min looked back at us and swallowed.

I could see Sam looking over at the doorway just as I had.

The security guard frowned. "Where did you say you worked again?"

"Operations in Kimberley," she said. "Doesn't it say that?"

He made a non-committal noise and tabbed through several pages. "No, it _doesn't_ say that," he said. "It says you _used_ to work down here, though."

I have no idea how Min managed to appear perfectly calm, but she did. "Yeah, I did. Until about eighteen months ago."

That, he nodded at. "Let me make a phone call," he said, and lifted the handset of the phone.

Min shook her head. "Look, if it's too much hassle we'll just leave," she said quickly. "It's not like I particularly _need_ the documents on a Saturday anyway."

"Yeah, let's go have breakfast somewhere," Bree called nervously. "I really need some eggs!"

"Stay here a second," the man said to all of us, and it wasn't clear if it was a request or an order. We stayed put anyway.

He just called one number, and it was obviously internal because two seconds later a fresh face in a security uniform appeared. "What's up?"

"She says she works up north but the system has nothing on her," he said. "Do you know what's going on?"

"Oh, yeah," he said. I didn't miss Min turning away from him with her jaw set tightly. "The flood knocked out the servers up there and Singapore has another thirty minutes ETA on loading the backup," he said. "There's no sync from Ops North at the moment, so any personnel files are—" He made it to the desk and had glanced at the computer screen and double-took. " _Min Lee_?" He looked up at her for a moment, squinting at her. "Fuck!" he said. "It _is_ you! I didn't recognise you with the…" He paused, looking her up and down. "Short hair," he finished, obviously wanting to say a lot more.

Min had her eyes closed for a moment. "Hi," she said awkwardly.

He looked much more pleased to see her than she was him. "Wow, I thought you quit! This is great!"

The other guard looked between them and rolled his eyes. "Since you two clearly know each other, I'm going for a smoke," he said, and walked out the back.

"I'd love to stay and talk," she said stiffly, "but we're in a rush."

The guard was _beaming_ at her as he leant indulgently forward on his elbows on the desk. "Of course you are, with all that shit that's going on up there. What a fucking mess though, hey? Can't say I'm too sad about it to be honest, but you didn't hear that from me."

Min laughed politely and then gestured at the gate. "Could you?"

He looked surprised. "Oh, yeah. Here." Before he gave Min her pass back, he looked at it for a moment. "You look so different in casual gear," he said. "I guess it's more practical for mining, right? Bit hard to be in Ops with long hair. But hey, wouldn't it be weird if I met you out like this now? The boys here might get the wrong idea about me." He laughed openly again and gave the ID card back to her. It was a really obnoxious sound, and I could have done with some sort of weapon just then.

It had taken this length of conversation for me to finally realise through all the cottonwool in my head that Min wasn't out to her ex-coworkers. Even after all that time working for them.

He walked quickly over and opened the gate for us, leaning so close that I wasn't certain I would be upset if any of the spirits transferred to him. "Perhaps I'll see you and your friends out this weekend, yeah? If you live up there it's probably been a pretty long time since you've hit the town." He grinned at us, his eyes resting on me. "Hey, is that who I think it is?"

He had obviously been waiting for me to say something, but I was still stuck on the whole Min-not-out thing and completely didn't notice. Sam answered for me in flat voice. "No. No, it's not."

The guard laughed and let us all through the gate. "I really hope I see all of you out at The Basement tonight." His tone of voice made me feel really uncomfortable. "Great to see you again, Minnie." He laughed at the obvious contradiction between his nickname for Min and her height.

Before the glass doors had shut behind us and Sam had opened her mouth to speak, Min said very quickly, "He was just a colleague, that's all."

Sam looked at Bree, who shrugged.

We followed Min to a lift that took us all the way to the top floor of the building. The lift was another one of those ones that was filled with mirrors, and I was forced to stare at my pale, sunken face behind the sunglasses from ground floor to level thirty-six. I looked just so ill and so different. I hardly recognised myself.

Level thirty-six was just a series of huge offices, but the office that Min led us into really took the cake. It was _huge,_ and one whole wall was a single window with uninterrupted views over the harbour and surrounds. Interestingly, the desk placed in front of it was facing away from the views. On the table was a gold name-plate that read _Diane Frost, CEO_.

Min saw me looking at it. "Sean's says ' _Co-CEO_ ', and he was always really pissed off that Diane's didn't." That particular memory, she smiled at.

Sam walked out into the middle of the room and took out her camera. "Okay, so," she said, filming us. "Let's search this place before Singapore syncs the personnel files, or whatever that creepy guard guy said was going to happen."

Bree was already opening Diane's drawers. "What are we looking for?" she asked.

"I don't know," I said. "Just anything unusual that might mean something related to the stone."

Bree gave me a look. "Right," she said at length. "By the way, this draw is full of money, can I take some?"

" _No_ ," Min said firmly as she sat down in front of Diane's computer. "If anything like that's missing they'll pull videos and that guy knows me."

Bree looked disappointed, but continued rummage through the drawers.

I had just been standing in the middle of the room watching them for at least a minute before I realised I should have been searching, too. I wandered over to the open bookcase. It contained the same sorts of books Dad's had; the full set of leather-bound Encyclopaedia Britannica, and all the classics. In addition to those, Diane had the last five years of Business Law International and a series of other books.

Sam made a disgusted noise. "Gina Rinehart and Clive Palmer," she said with disgust. When I turned to look at her, she had lifted a photo frame off the desk. It was a photo of Diane at a table with two overweight and unkempt middle-aged people in suits. I didn't know who they were, but Sam enlightened me. "Australian mining magnates," she said. "Clive Palmer came to one of my Dad's functions once and then started to make all these really offensive comments about cheap Asian labour and my Dad's head of media was like, 'Um, you do realize _we're_ Asian, right?'. Just, _ugh_. He was _so_ drunk."

Min swore at the computer, indicating she hadn't been paying attention. "I can't figure out her password," she said. "I was sure it was going to be something like 'die brother die', or 'sean-frost-is-a-dick'."

While I was turning back to the books, I could hear Sam walking around the room. "There's no pictures of family or kids anywhere," she said. "Like, anywhere."

"Diane doesn't have a partner or kids," Min said. "She's married to the job."

That reminded me of a certain other CEO I'd come across recently, and I felt uncomfortable.

I was so tired that I really had to look very carefully at all of the books and really think about the titles to decide if they were relevant or not. As a result the whole process took me a good five or ten minutes when it really should have taken me thirty seconds. Towards the end of the bookcase I'd crouched down and was re-reading a title I'd read incorrectly several times when Sam made a comment over my shoulder. "Hey, isn't that a book on Australian history?"

I turned stiffly toward her and then looked back at where she was pointing. It was, and I was momentarily very annoyed that I looked so stupid for not seeing it myself. I lifted it out with shaking arms and walked slowly over to lay it open the big cedar desk.

I'd been leafing through various pages before Bree, who was on the other side of the table, said, "There's a bookmark buried in it." I leant over so I could see the top of the pages; she was right. I flipped it open to a chapter about mythology in the Kimberley. It was too much to read over right now, but my heart was racing. This must be it, there must be something in this chapter.

The vibrate on Sam's phone was so enthusiastic I could hear it in her pocket. I just looked at her and she rolled her eyes. " _Fine,_ " she said. "If it will make you happy, I'll call her back." She took her phone out of her pocket and dialled voicemail, staring at me.

I ignored her, turning further through the book while Min and Bree watched from the other side of the table. The history pre-dated white colonisation and focused mainly on the spiritual beliefs and practices of various Aboriginal nations; it was actually something I thought I would probably like to read myself. If I wasn't wavering between murdering someone or jumping out the window, that is.

Sam's brow lowered while she was listening to the voicemail. I made eye contact with her, but she didn't say anything to me, she just looked at the phone momentarily and chose the call-back function.

"Hey, what's that?" Bree asked, and when I looked across at her, she had her head tilted and she was bending so she could see into the arch between the front cover and the pages. I let her reach over and push the pages together to reveal the front cover. There was writing on it.

"Hello," Sam greeting whoever was on the phone in Japanese. "You've been looking for me?"

I looked back at the writing, and it took a few moments for me to focus enough to read it.

" _Di,_ " it said, " _I was given this book some time ago but the information is of no real interest to me. I've highlighted the appropriate sections; this is right up your alley. Perhaps after you've read this you'll be happy to finally 'listen' to my proposal – JN."_ It was dated about five years ago.

I had a _really_ deep discomfort growing in the pit of my stomach, but I couldn't think clearly to identify what was causing it. This was what we were looking for, I was sure of it. But what was this ominous personal note in the front? I recognised the hand writing.

" _What_!" Sam said in Japanese suddenly enough to cause my heart to get going again. Bree and Min just stared at her, not understanding the significance of the conversation she was having because it was in Japanese. "Are you sure? Are you completely sure they got the address right? Surrey?"

Bree looked back at the note. "'JN'," she said. "Who do you reckon that is?" She was looking at Min, who then looked to me. I was only half paying attention to them, though, because Sam was staring at me with a completely stunned expression and I was worried about why that might be.

After being silent for a moment she held the phone away from her ear. She looked completely shell-shocked. "Lara, something's happened back home in England."

Now everyone was staring at me. I felt sick.

"' _JN_ '," I said, feeling everything slowly piece together in my aching head. I knew that hand-writing, I knew it. I felt a familiar wave of terror and helplessness that I recognised so terribly well, but it wasn't until my eyes actually fell back on the gold name-plate with the letters ' _CEO_ ' on it that I realised what was going on.

"Jacqueline Natla," I breathed.


	30. Chapter 30

Everyone was speaking to me, but I couldn't focus on anything I was hearing. All I could do was stare down at the page at the letters ' _JN_ '. I wanted to pick the leather-bound book up and throw it through the window, as if that would help. _Fuck you_ , I thought bitterly to myself, _even when you're dead you can't leave us alone._ God, even just thinking about that woman made my heart pound, and not for the reason it used to. I didn't know it was possible to _hate_ someone so very much.

By the time I was able to tear my eyes away from the book, Sam had stopped trying to get through to me and was leaning mutely against the desk, staring through it. She wasn't even filming, and that's how I knew something was _really_ wrong. "I'm sorry, what were you saying?"

Sam's eyebrows had converged above her eyes. She looked up at me. "There's been a fire at our house."

I hadn't been expecting to hear anything like that, so I wasn't able to process it straight away. "A fire? How bad?"

Sam shook her head. "Emi didn't say," she said. "She just said someone would call me and fill me in soon."

"The landlord, I imagine?"

Sam gave me a tired look. "No, the detectives from the arson squad."

I felt stupid, and then I was angry that I felt stupid. Should I have been able to figure that out? God, I had no bloody idea. It took me ten minutes to figure out things I should have been able to catch onto in a split second. I just hated myself like this. I vowed to never take a single night's sleep for granted ever again.

Bree picked up the discarded camera from Diane's desk and pointed it at me. "If it's the arson squad, they obviously think someone did it on purpose."

Min had been quiet through much of the conversation, but when she spoke it was with conviction. "It's Frost," she said. "They'd do it, they would."

For a few seconds I just kind of stared at them all, still trying to control how irritable I was feeling before I said anything. I wasn't sure if I thought Frost had done it or not, and in the end, I went with 'not'. "Sean's dead and Diane's on life support, isn't she?"

Sam shrugged. "Don't forget basically the whole payroll out there were criminals. Maybe some of them had friends in England."

I looked back down at the book in front of me and the letters ' _JN_ ' and had a rush of panic. It's her, I thought. It's Natla. Natla's somehow done it, from beyond the grave. Then I felt stupid again about thinking that was even possible. Why would Natla care about our house even if she _was_ still alive? She was manipulative, not petty.

Sam saw where I was looking. "You know, that was my first thought, too," she said. "But she's dead. I watched her fall into that lava. Look," she leaned over as close as she dared to and pointed at the date on the note. " _'July 2007'_ ," she said. "Five years ago. She's dead."

"Intellectually I know that," I said. "But…" I exhaled. "That panic, that feeling in my chest when I saw her name… I just can't believe it. Even if I had her decaying body laid out in front of me I'd still be expecting her eyes to fly open."

Min and Bree were watching us from the office chair. Bree had sat on Min's lap, camera still pointing at us. I hated that they could still touch each other when we couldn't. "Maybe they were hooking up," Bree suggested. "Diane and Natla."

Min's expression was priceless. "Okay, get off me," she said, and pushed Bree off. "In '07 I was working here and Diane was basically _at_ work twenty four seven. Unless she's some creature that doesn't need sleep she wasn't hooking up with _anyone._ "

Bree rolled her eyes as she smoothed her shorts. "I was just saying. Diane's not married and Natla was gay. It's possible."

I thought of Larson and winced. "Natla wasn't gay," I said. "She was whatever she needed to be to get the results she wanted."

Sam re-read the inscription. "Yeah, and by this note it kind of looks like they weren't even getting along that well."

Bree threw her hands up. "Okay, okay! I get it, I was wrong. It was just a suggestion, _sheesh_." Behind her, Min was trying to conceal a smile.

When Sam's phone rang again, I remembered what had happened in England and felt another surge of adrenaline. Sam answered it in English, but then immediately exhaled audibly and relaxed. "Dad," she said, and then looked nervously at me and said, "I can't talk right now, I'll call you back soon," and just hung up.

She'd never had any problems talking to him in front of me before. I was probably being paranoid; she was waiting for a call from the police and wanted to get him off the phone. It was probably nothing to do with me.

"We don't know how bad it is yet," I reminded her. "Someone might just have lit our hedge on fire or something."

"I left my straightener on once and it set the smoke detector off," Bree said. "Fire trucks came and everything and the bathroom stank of smoke for weeks but it was fine."

"It was a sign from God that you should leave those curls alone," Min said.

Sam didn't look that comforted by Bree's admission. "Yeah, but I guess the arson squad didn't want to speak to you, either."

Bree made a face. "Well, no."

While I was worrying about what the landlord was going to think of us, Min's eyes drifted back to the computer screen. "Shit!" she said. "Come on, we've only got a few minutes before they realise we're not supposed to be here." She lifted the book from the table in front of me. "I'd better carry this out."

In the lift on the way down, Sam had her phone out and was picking through news websites looking for anything about our house. There was nothing, and that made her even more nervous. "When news is suppressed, it's almost always serious," she told me.

"It could also mean it's not serious enough to _make_ the news," I pointed out, but it didn't comfort her much. She still looked like she'd seen a ghost, and there was nothing I could do about it. "I wish I could give you a big hug," I said. She looked over at me and smiled faintly anyway. I just wanted these _things_ off me; I should have listened to Amanda.

"Stop with the fucking camera, Bree," Min said neutrally.

"But they're being cute," Bree said, but closed the LCD and reluctantly handed it back to Sam.

Sam accepted it but just kept staring at her phone. I watched her for a few moments, and then looked back into the mirror ahead of me. Of the four of us standing in the lift, I looked like I would be the least able to deal with anything at this point. Especially if the anything had mercenaries and magic. Even Bree looked like she'd have a better chance than I would. I just looked so pale that the corners of my mouth were almost green, and I was sweating from how hot I was in the long-sleeved top.

As we passed through security on the way out, the guard was still there and looked like he was going to make another attempt to engage us. Min just walked _straight_ past him. "Sorry, we're in a rush," she said pleasantly.

He looked a little too closely at me as I walked through the door, and I realised I'd forgotten to flip the heavy sunglasses from on top of my head to back over my eyes. By the time I did it, it was too late. "Hey, it _is_ you! That _Tomb Raider_ chick, right? That movie was great!" I smiled vaguely at him so that I didn't _seem_ too rude, even if I was about five seconds off punching him right in that grinning mouth. "Anyway, you're out of luck with Frost," he continued, pausing for effect. "Diane's definitely evil but I'm pretty sure she's not a winged demon!" He laughed at his own joke as we walked out of the front doors.

When we'd all piled back into Min's car, she took a deep breath. "You know I sometimes complain about being broke, but that twenty minute visit just reminded me of all the reasons I _hated_ working for them." She passed the book back to me. "Here. I hope it has whatever you need in it."

I just gave it straight to Sam without even opening it. She looked blankly at me, so I explained, "I can't even read _titles_ of books. I'm way too tired to absorb anything right now."

Min was waiting for something. I stared at her, trying to figure out what it was. I didn't think about how odd that must have looked until a blush had risen to Min's cheeks. She looked uncomfortable. "Well," she said, prompting me. "Where do you want to go now?"

Sam caught the exchange. "We need a cheap little wireless security camera," she answered quickly, not giving me another opportunity to stare blankly at people with no idea what to say or do. "So wherever sells that, I guess."

Bree and Min looked at each other. "JBs?" Min wondered aloud, and while they were arguing about where they should take us, Sam opened the book across her lap. With my head relaxed against the seatbelt strap, I watched her until I couldn't keep my eyes open.

I kept thinking I _was_ lying in the beanbag by the fire with Sam, back at the house. The sun from the car window was on me and the warmth felt like firelight. With my eyes closed I could see every old stone on the wall over the fireplace. It couldn't possibly burn down, I thought. Stones don't burn.

We'd pulled into a car park when Sam's phone rang again. It was from a private number. She took a deep breath and answered it as Min parked.

When Min turned off the engine, I could hear every word and Sam looked at me, panicking. I didn't understand why at all, and I was worrying about her when I finally paid attention to what was coming out of her phone.

"Hello?" a man's voice was saying, and even through the phone I could hear it was an English accent. "Hello? Is this Samantha Nishimura?" He pronounced her name wrong. _Everyone_ pronounced her name wrong.

"That's me," Sam said, not at all bothered about the pronunciation as she focused on trying to get out the car as quickly as possible. She wasn't fast enough.

"Are you the owner of the Fullers Estate on Fullers Farm Road, West Horsley?"

Sam froze and looked across at me. The panic on her face faded to apology. "Yes," she said, and then squinted and put her hands over her eyes for a moment.

I couldn't… "'Are you the owner of….'" I repeated as I realised what was going on. "Sam, you _bought_ it?" The look she was giving me. "You bought it and you didn't _tell_ me?"

In the front seat, Min was looking uncomfortable. "Come on, Bree," she said. "Let's go get something to eat." Bree was very interested in the conversation and didn't look like she was going anywhere. Min muttering something and banged her head repeatedly on the steering wheel.

Sam looked from Min and Bree to me, the phone still against her ear. The man was still talking. "I know this is difficult to hear, but your house has unfortunately been destroyed in a fire. At this stage we're treating the matter as suspicious. Are you able to return to England?"

Sam's lip was quivering. "Lara's kind of ill at the moment," she said. "We can't come back right now."

There was just too much going on. I wanted to know what the man was saying, but I also just couldn't deal with what I'd learnt. Sam _bought_ the house? She _bought_ it? Why on earth wouldn't she have told me about that? "I gave you two thousand quid for _rent!"_ I accused her. I wasn't sure if I was horribly angry with her for lying to me or delighted by what buying a house for us meant.

The man made an affirmative noise. "A miracle that you weren't here. There has definitely been some sort of accelerant used, which is why we need to ask you some questions. I know this is a difficult time for you—"

Sam interrupted him, swallowing. "God, you have _no_ idea how difficult."

He cleared his throat. "Yes, a difficult time, I apologise. It's a lot to come to terms with. But I need to ask you some questions about whether or not you have some idea who might want to harm you or your friend. It's best we do that at a police station where we can record the conversation."

 _That_ , she laughed at, and a little too loudly. "Yeah, there are a lot of people who want to harm us," she said. "Maybe we should start the list with who _doesn't_ want to harm us. I do reality TV, and Lara," she looked at me. "Well, Lara's like a trouble-magnet."

"The best thing to do is just find the closest police station and have the sergeant there phone me. I'll walk you through doing an interview in absentia." While he was going through the process of what he wanted us to do, I just sat there and tried to labour through the fog in my head.

The people who wanted to harm us... Well, Diane, of course. She wanted to harm us, but she couldn't harm us or order us harmed while she was unconscious. Probably some of the criminals, but I doubted there had been sufficient time for anyone to recover, research us and then organise the arson. Natla was dead, Pierre was dead, maybe there were families of some of the other men I'd shot in the past… But that didn't feel right. I thought for a second that it might just be a random attack, and then I remembered Amanda. I dismissed it at first, but my brain latched onto the idea and ran with it.

She'd left the ship and the men hadn't been expecting her back for some time. How many hours had it been? I tried to count on my fingers. Eighteen, twenty, twenty-four hours, maybe? Our flight had taken twenty-three, but we'd had a layover in the middle. A charter flight could probably make London in eighteen.

That didn't answer the question of why she'd go to our house, but I had a bad feeling about it. Especially because of that gold pen we'd found on the ship. If it meant she'd traced our footsteps, I didn't want to follow that thought. I knew I had to.

God, it couldn't be. It couldn't. I couldn't even bring myself to _think_ it.

I snapped out of my trance and held my hand out to Sam. "Give me the phone." I probably sounded angry.

Sam's jaw opened. She closed it again. "Lara wants to speak to you," she said, and then obliged.

I held the handset to my ear. "Hello?"

"Lara Croft?" I could hear people talking in the background and the unmistakable sound of drizzle and light wind distorting the mic.

"That's right," I said. "I need you to do me a favour, if that's alright? It will help, I promise." He didn't say anything, so I kept talking. I hadn't realised how awfully hoarse I sounded until I heard the echo of my voice on the line. "You're outside the house now, aren't you? Is it safe to go inside?"

"I am there, yes. Parts of it are safe, Forensics is in there now."

"Okay," I said. "I need you to look for something very important, it won't take very long." I could feel my heart racing. I just hoped I was wrong. "Over the fireplace there are a few little boxes. They're metal, so they should still be in one piece."

He greeted someone. "I can see them," he said when he put the phone back against his ear. I heard the sound of him picking one or two of them up and looking inside. "Is there something very valuable in here you think someone might have been after?"

I took a breath. Sam was frowning at me; I hadn't told her what was in those little boxes. Looking directly at Sam and a little breathless, I asked the detective, "There's one with a copper heart on top of it. Can you find it?"

"They're all covered in ash, hang on a second." He brushed the ash off the metal. "Oh, yeah. Yeah, I found it, but I hope you're not expecting anything to be in it, because it's empty."

I felt like all the air had been sucked out of my lungs. Empty?

When I was able to gather myself so I could speak again I managed, "I know who did it. I can't prove it, but I will," and I hung up the phone and stared at it in my hands.

No, I thought. No, not now. Not again. I wanted to close my eyes and just sleep forever to never have to go through any of that again.

"Lara?" Sam said gently.

Bree wasn't as subtle. "Who did it?" she asked. "Oh, my God, you have to tell us who it was, this is killing me!" Min was glaring at her. I felt like she was speaking at me from a million miles away.

I looked up at Sam, a knot forming in my stomach. "Sam, the Scion fragment was in that box."


	31. Chapter 31

Sam just stared at me, eyebrows low. "It can't be _gone_ ," she said. There was a hint of desperation in her voice. "Are you sure it was definitely in that box? Maybe you moved it or something and forgot?"

I gave her a look. "How often do I lose things, Sam?"

She scrunched up her face. "Okay, I get it, I get it." She let out a breath, her eyes glazing over again. "But she's dead," she said, obviously meaning Natla. "She's dead. It can't be…"

I looked down at Sam's phone in my lap. "She is," I said. "It wasn't Natla. It was Amanda."

While Sam was processing that, Bree opened her mouth to say something and Min shushed her. She gave Min a defiant look and then said anyway, "Isn't Atlantis destroyed though? Why would she want the Scion? Would it even work?"

I shook my head; I had _no_ idea. Furthermore, I had just been told my house had burnt down with all my belongings in it; I had no idea what was left and even if there would be anything at all. And that house, that house that _Sam had bought for us_. God, it was too much, especially on no sleep. I knew I should be reacting to this news but I just couldn't connect with it. I had no emotions at all. None of it felt real.

I looked across the back seat at Sam, hoping she would be able to make something of what was going on. She had this blank, lost stare.

Bree was watching me intently, obviously expecting me to say something. I strained to remember the conversation we'd been having. "Amanda must think the Scion _will_ work," I said eventually. "Or she wouldn't have travelled to the other side of the planet to burn our house down and take it from us."

Sam closed her eyes as I said the last part. When she opened them again, she'd mustered a look of determination, but I didn't believe at all it was how she felt. "Let's get that security camera," she said, and went to get out of the car. "We can talk about this all day but it's not going to get us any closer to finding out what's actually going on."

She climbed out of the car without waiting for me and I rushed after her. Behind me, Bree was going to follow us but Min had a handful of her singlet. "Oh, no you don't," I heard Min say. "Not this time." I heard the unmistakable click of a door being locked.

Even with Min's heavy sunglasses on, standing in the sun was uncomfortable. Sam had a head-start on me and I ended up needing to jog to catch up with her. My legs were _not_ happy about that, and neither was my head. It wasn't as if I wasn't adept at completely ignoring my body, though. "Sam?" I had attempted to call out to her, but my voice just rasped and I didn't manage much volume at all.

She slowed anyway, but she was still walking towards the entrance. She didn't look at me as I pulled up beside her. "Let's just get the camera," she said stiffly before I could say anything else to her. I would have stopped her and made her talk about it, but I couldn't touch her. Instead, I followed her into the store.

JBs was more like a big wholesale warehouse for electronics than just a shopfront, and if Sam had been in a better mood I would have lost her to the camera department for _hours._ We had to go there anyway to look for the wireless security camera Sam had mentioned, but when Sam was walking along the aisles, her eyes were glazed.

While she was picking up various boxes and holding them next to each other, I stood opposite her. It took a lot of effort for me to focus on what I'd just learnt. "You bought us a _house_ ," I prompted her.

She just stood there, staring right through the boxes in her hands. "Yeah," she said. Then, she sighed. "You know, this wasn't exactly what I had in mind when I thought about how I was going to tell you."

I took a step toward her. "You should have," I said. "I would have been happy."

Sam laughed a few times. It sounded like she didn't believe me. "Are you kidding me? You'd overanalyse it to hell. You won't even let me put my name on your electric bills." Well, no, but that was because Sam had a habit of deferring responsibilities that didn't interest her until repossession agents were practically on the doorstep. I didn't say that, though. I just let her talk. "You get weird about serious stuff."

I shrugged. "You could have told me it was for investment purposes or maybe that you—"

"Yeah, Lara," Sam interrupted me, looking up from her boxes. "I could have told you a whole lot of other stuff that wasn't true, as well." She looked away from me again, back down at the _Wireless Warden 502.b_. "I didn't set out for it to happen at first. I applied for a whole stack of rental properties but people don't want two twenty-something celebrities living in their nice quiet country estates. They want retirees and rich widowers. I was just at the real estate agent complaining about it and they showed me our place and it was just perfect," she said. She smiled slightly. "It was _exactly_ what I knew you'd love. I didn't even care that it needed some work. And you know Dad lets me run my own trust, now…"

I opened my mouth but couldn't say anything for a moment, trying to piece together what I'd just heard. "You didn't even care if it needed some work… Sam," I said, leaning sideways and trying to catch her eyes so she had to look at me. " _You_ restored it? _You_ did all that?"

She shrugged. "Well, I didn't do it. I hired someone."

I took a deep breath, running fingers through my hair. Wow. That beautiful house, perfect in every detail. Even the cut of wood used in the shutters was exactly right. No wonder she'd been so very excited to show it to me.

She made a noise. "See? Now you know why I didn't tell you." She put one of the boxes back on the shelf. "Not to sound totally tragic, but I've lived in something like twenty houses and I just had this idea it would be really nice to have a place of our own. I have awesome fun travelling with you and I get that what we do is really important." She looked up at me, and the expression in her eyes just broke my heart. "There's just something really comforting about the idea of going home with you to _our home_ when it's all over."

I watched her, wishing I could figure out what to say. "Sam…"

She looked away again and took a long, measured breath. When she spoke again, there was something entirely different in her voice. "I'm going to kill her," she said. I didn't think it was a figure of speech. "Lara, I'm going to fucking kill her for what she's done. I don't care what happened to Larson; that was an accident. This wasn't."

She started walking towards the registers. I let her go for a moment, staring after her. I wondered if I'd have known the right thing to say on a full nights' sleep, because I completely at a loss right now. What do you even say to someone who's told you all that? "Sam?" She stopped, looking back at me. I walked stiffly up to her. We stood silently for a few moments. Her bottom lip was quivering and I wanted to kiss it. "I love you," I said quietly. It wasn't eloquent, but it was what I was thinking.

The muscles in her face tightened for a moment and she looked like she was about to cry. She managed to steady herself before she actually did, though. "I wish you could show me right now, Lara," she said. "So much. You have no idea."

"I wish we had that lovely old house to go back to so I could."

 _That_ made the tears spill down her cheeks. She wiped them hurriedly away. "Let's just finish this whole Amanda thing," she said. "I don't even care what she thinks she's doing with the Stone or with the Scion or with that sweet little girl, let's just go fix it up."

I nodded, and she mirrored my nod, and then went to go pay. In the split second before I followed her, I noticed movement on my wrist. I'd been inadvertently leaning on one of the shelves, and my hand was resting right next to a next generation Satellite phone. As I lifted it off the shelf to get a closer look, whatever had been wriggling around on my hand scuttled back under my sleeve.

Across the aisle, someone's child was staring open-mouthed at me while his mother explained something to the customer service clerk. I smiled uncomfortably at him and then grabbed another box and took them both up to the counter with Sam.

She took a quick glance at the features of the phones while she was putting them both on expense. "' _Waterproof, tested to fifty metres_ '," she read. "Awesome. If you fall off Amanda's ship into the sea and start to drown you can call me to let me know not to pick up dinner."

I laughed, much louder than I'd intended to. It was such a pleasant surprise to hear her joking about again. "That," I said, "or I could take an exclusive photo from inside the shark that eats me. Just imagine the headlines."

Sam accepted her card back from the clerk and put it in her purse. "Now you're talking," she said, and then sighed. "At least I got really good insurance," she said, getting back to the house. "God damn it. I knew I hated that girl. I'm having all these really violent fantasies about snapping those twig arms of hers."

Despite the fact my own arms were shaking like leaves, I fell into the habit of taking the shopping bags from the clerk. "Let me handle the violence," I said to her as we walked back out towards the car. "Believe me, at this point I'd much rather shoot her in the face than have a conversation with her. My whole set of rare Japanese manuscripts was in that house. So was Roth's old uniform."

"All the books were in those boxes under the stairs, though," Sam pointed out. "Maybe the fire didn't get there." It was useless trying to figure out what might or might not be burnt, though.

To be honest, it wasn't even the idea of what I might have lost that was worrying me. The fact that the Scion had come into play again, that did not bode well. If Amanda needed our piece, it meant she'd found the other two in Croatia. I didn't what to think about what she'd found buried with them. Natla may have been dead, but the idea any part of her or her legacy could come back for us was deeply unsettling.

I wasn't concerned about Amanda. I mean, I was aware that she had power, but she was no Sun Queen. I'd figure Amanda out. Natla, though; Natla was another category of adversary. She knew me better than I knew myself. And it wasn't just that she _knew_ me, she knew how to _wield_ me.

I shivered. Please, let Amanda be it, I thought. I just can't handle anything else in a state like this. I didn't want any beyond-the-grave surprises, in whatever form they took. Sam noticed my face and gave me an inquiring look.

"I don't like this," I told her honestly. "I have a really bad feeling about where this is all heading."

"I know what you mean," she said. "But it's not like we can just give up and go home now, right?" She gestured at my stomach. "These guys probably want to stay in Australia and we already knew they can mess with _car_ engines."

"Not to mention the whole needing sleep to live thing," I added. "And the fact I might want to touch my girlfriend again at some point."

She gave me a look. "Yeah, if my memory serves me that does actually happen occasionally."

I smacked her legs with the bag. "Don't you start with that again," I told her, but she was already half smiling.

Min and Bree were sitting still and looking surprisingly innocent when we got back to the car. There were other little telling details, though; Bree was missing an earring, the air freshener was wrapped around the rearview mirror and Min's face was flushed. I didn't need sleep to hazard a guess as to how Min had managed to convince Bree to stay in the car.

I didn't say anything, and they certainly didn't mention it. "Get what you need?" Min asked. Bree burst into a fit of giggles. Min glared across at her.

Sam looked between them. "Actually, yeah," she said, and showed them what we'd bought as she buckled her seatbelt.

Min glanced back at the phones as she reversed out of the park. "You're going back out tonight?" she asked.

Sam looked at me. "Well, assuming Lara's okay, yeah." I shrugged. I didn't think I was likely to feel okay, but I was also beginning to realise there was nothing I could do about it.

"I guess we'll go back home so you guys can rest, then," Min said. "There's something I'd like to do anyway."

Back at Min's, I had my long-sleeve top off halfway inside the front door. I was making a beeline for the bedroom and fantasizing about lying down, but Min stopped me.

"Hey, wait a second," she said, walking up toward me. I had my sports bra on, but Min's eyes were on my torso anyway. I was too foggy to think of something witty to say about it, so I just blushed. Bree was looking at me with less critical curiosity, as well. "Turn around, would you?" Min asked. I wasn't sure what to make of the way she was speaking.

Feeling awfully self-conscious because I had no idea what was going on, I turned slowly around. Sam was watching me from the doorway. She looked confused and just for a second I saw her brow dip.

When Min was done examining every inch of my skin, she sat down at her computer, switching it on and pulling out something that looked like a second computer screen. She laid it flat across the table in front of the keyboard and grinned at me. "You'll see," she said in answer to my silent question.

Bree didn't take it so well. She groaned. "Great, now she's going to be really boring all afternoon," she said. "What am I going to do?"

"Learn to play Call of Duty so my friends stop wiping the floor with you," Min suggested, scribbling experimentally on the screen-thing with a plastic pen and then fiddling with some settings. "Despite how perfect your hair is for mopping floors."

While Bree flopped on the sofa bed and continued to complain, Sam and I edged past them both into the bedroom.

I had sat on the bed, sighing with relief at getting the weight off my feet, when I realised Sam was still standing opposite me. I looked over at her; she was staring at her suitcase.

"It's so freaky that this might actually be everything I own," she said. "Bet you're wishing you didn't pack light."

I shrugged. "I don't really care about clothes," I said. "You buy me loads of new ones every season, anyway. Besides," I began taking off my only pair of boots, "half the things _you_ own are still at your dad's, anyway."

She shrugged and sat on the bed. "It's surreal," she said. "It's like I haven't realised it yet. All our stuff is probably gone and I'm busy stressing about the fact our friends kind of looked like they were checking you out."

I snorted. "If that's how _you_ feel, imagine how it feels to try and think about this stuff when you've been basically awake for three days." As if to accentuate my point, I found myself staring down at my boots which were still on my feet. Had I stopped taking them off for some specific reason? "What was I doing?" I asked myself aloud, and then wished I hadn't.

Sam laughed. "Oh, God," she said. "We are so screwed if you can't even take off your own shoes."

I finished undressing and lay back down against the mattress. My body felt like a sack full of lead. Sore lead. When I closed my eyes my ears rang; so loudly I could probably have tried to hum the note.

While I was busy feeling like I was being pressed under a rolling pin, I heard the lock sound of Sam opening the iPad. I grumbled.

"I just want to watch something," she said as I desperately tried to pry my eyelids open. "Some ridiculous reality TV show or something, like we normally do before bed." She looked over at me through the gap in the mounds of clothing between us. "You don't mind, do you?"

I wasn't going to be able sleep anyway, so what was the harm in Sam at least feeling comfortable and relaxed? I shook my throbbing head at her. Her bright smile made it all worth it.

I didn't sleep, but Sam eventually did. Fortunately, I was past the point of exhaustion where lying awake in bed meant that I was alone with my thoughts. First of all, the spirits made it abundantly clear at every opportunity that I _wasn't_ alone, and secondly, unless I actually tried very hard to focus, no thoughts came at all.

That was when the strange sensations started, though. At first it felt like my arms were being gently tugged, but the more relaxed I became the more it felt like they were being stretched to three times their length, pulled rhythmically in time to my pulse. I felt very tiny compared to the vastness of the room and then for what must have been several hours I felt like I was pitching backwards through the mattress, head first.

I kept snapping awake because I thought I could hear Sam desperately whispering my name and trying to get my attention. Every time I looked over at her, she was just snoring quietly beside me.

As the sun started to go down and the light coming from under the door faded, in amongst the odd feelings and hearing things that weren't there, I realised something. It was the first clear thought I'd had since I lay down and it stood out in sharp comparison to all the other fog in my head.

The longer this goes on, the more I am going to deteriorate. It's _not going to get better_. Every hour I wait it will be harder for us to do what we need to do.

A clock had started counting down from the moment I'd woken up in that tent and I felt every click that second-hand had made since then. I had no idea how much time I had left before it was too late to do anything, but it couldn't be much. Look at me, I thought. This was serious.

I sat up with my ears ringing, the image of a clock in countdown still clear in front of my eyes. When I blinked, it was gone. We needed to go, and right now.

I leaned over the side of the bed fumbled around in the dark for my boots so I could put them on.

The commotion had woken Sam up and she yawned and stretched behind me. "Where's the fire?" she asked, and then her face fell. "Oh," she said. "Never mind." She stood up.

"We have to go," I said. "None of this is going to be over until _we_ sort it out and I have no idea how many hours I have left where I'm capable of anything useful."

Sam switched the light on; it hadn't even occurred for me to do that. When I looked turned to thank her, the concern was visible on her face. She swallowed. "I think you're past the useful point," she said. She even _sounded_ worried. "Lara, pants usually go on _before_ boots."

I looked down at my bare legs and my hiking boots and swore. "I think I'm going to need your help," I said wryly, pulling my boots off again.

She sat down on the edge of the bed at watched me, her brow low over her eyes. "Maybe we should think about other options," she said, hesitation in her voice. "I'm sure there's something you can take that will knock you out…" I firmly shook my head. "Lara," she said. "Listen to me. This is really freaking me out. You should see yourself."

"Well, try _being_ myself," I said rather harshly, and then winced. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry." I put my hands up in a 'yield' motion. "I didn't mean it like that."

She just looked up at me. She didn't even seem angry that I'd snapped at her. "Lara, I really think that you should—"

"There's a lot of things 'I should'. But I just want this whole messed up thing _over_ so I can finally _sleep_. This is the only way that's going to happen." I stood up, and then looked down my body to make sure I'd managed to actually dress myself this time. As far as I could see, I had. I then got to looking around for all my equipment.

Sam stayed seated on the bed until I was almost ready, and then reluctantly got changed herself.

When we emerged from the bedroom, Min had finished whatever she had been up to and she and Bree were seated on the couch with their arms around each other. Min had a controller in her hand, but she put it down when she saw us walk through the door.

She gave us the once-over. "I guess you need me to drive you somewhere," she said, standing and reaching for the car keys. I nodded. I noticed Min and Sam share a look as I walked towards the door. "I'll get it," Min said rather cryptically, I thought, and then ducked in the bedroom and came back with the AK47, still wrapped in one of her hoodies. I could have smacked my own forehead.

"Wait!" Bree said after spending a few moments squinting at me. She rushed over to the fridge and opened it, taking out the biggest energy drink can I'd ever seen. It was also a bright lime green and when I opened it and took one look at the liquid I half-expected that it would make me glow in the dark. "Drink this!" she said. "Let's hope it doesn't actually give you wings, though. Someone might mistake you for the bad guy." She grinned.

I drank deeply from it. If even a fraction of the 'facts' printed on the can were true, it had to help. "Thanks," I said to her. She looked delighted with herself.

I could barely stay focused in the car; it seemed like one second I was listening to a conversation and then the next the conversation had completely changed and so had the street. On one level the disconnect _was_ scary, on another, I was too tired to care. We had business to take care of and I just had to find a way to work with what I had.

I wasn't _really_ concerned about the state I was in until I suddenly found myself in a boat, staring blankly at keys in my hand. I didn't even know how I'd got there or what was happening. Something in my pocket had been buzzing, so I reached inside to find out what it was and took out a satellite phone. I stared at it. When did I put my SIM card in? While I was wondering that, I pressed the green button to find out what its problem was.

There was a message. " _Got seen early_ ," it said, " _180 hrs community service as usual lol. Which is basically what I do with my life anyway. Getting in the car right now, see you soon_." It took me longer than it should to figure out who it was from: Macca.

"Lara?"

I looked up. Sam was watching me from the back of the boat. I just stared at her. How on earth did I get here? "Yeah?" I said automatically.

"Aren't you going to tell me what's going on?"

"What's going on…" I repeated, not following her. I saw she was looking at the phone. "Oh," I said. "Macca's left Broome." I put the phone back in my pocket.

Sam took a breath. "You're being really strange," she said after a moment of considering me. "We were talking before and you were answering in, like, grammatically correct sentences and everything but _nothing_ you said made sense."

I looked from her to the keys in my hand and slowly joined the dots. I'd managed to get out of the car, into the boat and I was lucid enough to know that I needed to put the keys in the engine. I _should_ have been terrified of the fact I was losing large chunks of time, but instead I was relieved. If I had some sort of autopilot, great. I hoped she could roll out of the way of bullets faster than I felt like I could right then.

I fit the keys into the engine and turned it, waiting for it to stop sounding like it was about to stall. "Let's finish this," I said. "Just please, Sam, don't let me do anything stupid."

"I think it's too late for that," I heard her say bleakly as we accelerated away from the jetty.


	32. Chapter 32

I didn't remember much about the journey out to the ship; it was long and monotonous and there wasn't much worth focusing on. When we were up against the hull, the first thing Sam did was look up towards the sky and exhale with relief. It seemed like an odd thing for her to do right before we were about to put ourselves in danger, so I frowned at her.

She seemed conflicted about something for a moment, and then took another breath. "Can I show you something?" she said. When I nodded, she cued some footage and tossed the camera at me. "Check that out," she said as I caught it automatically. "That's what I watched for the last twenty minutes."

I looked at her for a moment, and then opened the LCD and pressed play. She'd had the camera pointed at me, set to Night Mode. At first, I didn't see what all the fuss was about. It was just me driving a boat and I wasn't doing a half bad job, either, especially considering how tired I was. Just as I was about to ask her what the problem was, 'I' turned around toward her and said clearly, "Stop pointing that thing at me."

I raised my eyebrows. I don't think I'd said anything like that to her since I was fifteen. It didn't stop there, either, because I kept glaring at her in the video. Sam was in the middle of apologising when it suddenly cut out. When it turned back on again, it was clear Sam had tried to conceal it inside the hoodie with the AK47.

I gave the camera back to her. "Sorry, I guess I'm grumpy when I'm half-asleep."

She didn't look convinced. "I didn't stop filming straight away because I wasn't sure you were serious, you know? When I didn't, that spirit-tattoo thing with the big staring eyes passed across your face and I swear to God it was _watching_ me."

Given the feelings I was having of being watched, it didn't surprise me. I didn't know what she wanted me to do about it, though. We were doing everything we could about it by just being here. "I'll go first," I said, not having the energy to waste of worrying about anything else except the task at hand. I turned towards the ladder.

I probably still would have been sore if I could have felt my muscles. My main problem now wasn't nursing aching joints and struggling to keep my eyes open, it was this persistent fog that had set in. Nothing felt real and my attention wandered.

When I didn't have any rungs left to climb, I realised I was at the top of the ladder. Somewhat belatedly, I also realised I was staring at the belt of a mercenary who was facing in the other direction. He was standing very still and staring forward; no wandering, chatting to colleagues or whistling. It was odd. Just for safety's sake, I grabbed that belt and pulled him over the edge above us.

He yelled as he fell, but that stopped short when there was a dull thump and the sound of something breaking. I recognised that sound from the mine; that was the sound of someone's skull cracking open.

Sam had caught all of it on film. She used the light meter to show me: as the light flashed over the boat I saw blood splatters on the edge and a body floating in the water. In the gentle glow of the LCD I could see she looked uneasy. "Did you know sharks can smell one drop of blood in a million drops of water?" I had a feeling she was quoting something from _Australia's Deadliest Creatures._

Sharks were the _last_ thing I cared about right now. "Guess we'd better not fall in, then," I said and climbed onto the deck.

There were far more guards than there had been before. _Far_ more. We hadn't been seen as we'd climbed on, but as we ran between the cargo holds several of them caught sight of me. I slipped my finger into the trigger of the AK47 around my neck. Despite the state I was in I probably would have been able to shoot them, but they didn't attack us. They just watched us with their guns at rest.

We had to walk through a group of them to get to the entrance to the locked cargo hold. They were six foot something and dressed in identical black suits with gas masks. It was impossible to differentiate them from each other, they looked like a drone army. None of them spoke to us, either, they just watched us intently from behind their gas masks. That was the part I found most odd: mercenaries were usually a pretty vocal bunch, regardless of whose side you were on.

"That was fucking terrifying," Sam whispered to me when we were well shot of them. "They've really perfected that whole anonymity thing. It's like a flock of ninjas dressed in combat gear."

I raised an eyebrow at her. "A 'flock'? That's not the right translation, is it?"

She was grinning as she walked backwards for a few paces to film the 'flock' behind us. "Nope. I just always kind of always wanted to call them that." She turned back forwards again. "Seriously, though. Where the hell do you find a group of guys like that?"

I shrugged. Just holding a single thought it my head took _all_ of my energy, I couldn't speculate about answers to questions that weren't important.

My reaction must have shown on my face, because Sam smirked. "Right," she said. "I'm filing that in the 'things to ask Lara after she's slept' section." She paused. "By the way, you realise we're going in the wrong direction, right?"

I hadn't. We didn't come this way before, and I had assumed the console was further along the two holds we were walking between. Actually, no, that wasn't it at all. I wasn't really thinking about what I was doing at all and I just sort of assumed I would end up in the right place. I stopped and look back. "Was it that cargo hold, there?" I asked, pointing to the one beside us.

"No, I'm pretty sure it's second from the big multi-story thing." Well, since I didn't trust my own judgment, I deferred to hers. Unfortunately, when we bustled around the corner, the console wasn't there, either. Sam looked sheepish. "Okay, so maybe I was wrong. Let's try the next one?"

"God, Sam," I complained, rubbing my awfully sore eyes and following her.

"Hey, at least they're not trying to kill us," Sam said, gesturing at another mercenary who was standing at the divide between the two cargo holds we were walking along. She said something else, as well, but I don't know what it was.

I stopped, because I could hear something. Actually, no, that's not right. I could _feel_ something, and shortly after I felt it, I heard the sound of chopper blades. "The helicopter," I said.

I must have interrupted whatever Sam was saying, because she looked blankly at me for a second. "Oh, yeah," she said, looking upwards. "I guess Amanda's back. Hey!" She pointed along the wall. "There's the console!"

She jogged over to the console door and opened it. I wasn't paying attention because I had pulled up my top and was looking at my stomach. The spirits were fading in and out of sight on my skin. That didn't make sense, though, because the helicopter was clearly some distance away and when Blanket was just on the other side of the playground in Derby they were unaffected by her.

While I was straining to think of why that could be, they very quickly disappeared. The helicopter hadn't landed, though, it was still hovering some distance above the ship, so unless Blanket _wasn't_ on the helicopter…

Oh, God, Blanket wasn't on the helicopter. "Sam!" I whispered loudly, grabbing her. We were near an open staircase that lead up to the top of the hold, so I pulled her underneath the shadow it threw from the deck lights. Just as I did, a door opened at the top of the stairs and someone _shrieked_ and rushed down them.

Between the rungs, I watched little Blanket shoot down the stairs at an alarming pace and rush up between the two walls of each hold. For a split second I thought she might be screaming, but she stopped when she got to the edge of them, looking back up the stairs. "Hurry up!" she squealed, and then took off up the deck, shrieking with delight.

The stairs rang as more measured footsteps came down them. "Blanket!" That was Amanda's voice. My jaw tightened just hearing it. "Blanket, don't go near the helipad, it's too…" She stopped shouting because Blanket was clearly gone and just sighed. "It's too fucking dangerous, you little shit," she muttered to herself. "Fuck my life."

I saw nothing but red. Fuck _your_ life? You just burnt Sam's beautiful house down, and you're whinging about _your_ life? I felt a surge of anger, and it was all I could do to not just point the AK47 strapped around my chest at her and empty the magazine into her head. I was so _bloody_ tired and sick of everything that she had caused me and _she_ was complaining about _her_ life?

"You're breathing really quickly," Sam murmured as Amanda rounded the edge of the deck. "Are you okay?"

I realised where I was, and that Sam was bailed up behind me. I stepped away from her, I closing my eyes and shaking my head. "I just really look forward to the moment when I get to kill her," I said clearly.

When I'd regained some composure, I went to go up the stairs but Sam took my hand and stopped me. Just the simple feeling of having her fingers interlaced in mine was pacifying. She looked down at our hands. "I just…" she shrugged. "Sorry, I just don't know when I'll be able to do this again."

I may have smiled slightly at her. "The sooner we finish this, the sooner we can."

"I know," she said quietly, and waited another couple of seconds before letting me go.

With Amanda and Blanket gone, I rushed up the stairs in the direction she'd come from, but the door was already shut. The console was locked again, too. Sam fit the wireless camera to it and then we edged around the holds to get a clear view of the helipad as the chopper landed.

Amanda had Blanket's hand while she jumped up and down and shrieked. A single man got out of the cockpit, and he had a white plastic back and something else which he gave to Amanda. He looked exactly the same as the other mercenaries, but seemed a lot more relaxed. He even took off his mask; there was nothing remarkable about his face at all. He wasn't very ninja-like; he just looked like your average grizzled mercenary.

"You took _ages!_ " Blanket told the man, breaking free of Amanda's grip and rushing up to him. "What is it?"

He knelt down and took at box out of the bag. I couldn't see what it was from here, but Sam snorted. She was watching the scene through the LCD of her camera, and must have had it on zoom. "It's a Nintendo 3DS," she told me.

"Yes!" was Blanket's reaction and she snatched the box from him and then went to go wrap herself around Amanda's legs. "Thank you! Thank you!" she repeated it several more times while Amanda just stood there with a hand on those scruffy black ringlets, looking uncomfortable. Then, Blanket knelt down right there on the deck and began to tear into the box.

"No, no!" Amanda said, hurriedly bending down to stop her. "We can unpack it back in our room." When Blanket looked up at her, potentially considering continuing, Amanda grudgingly explained why. "You'll lose pieces out here. Let's go upstairs."

Blanket considered her answer. "Okay!" she said eventually, and then gathered up the torn box in her arms and ran up the deck towards where we were crouched. We backed away as she ran past, followed by Amanda. This close to Amanda, I would have managed a clear shot right between her eyebrows, regardless of what state I was in. I couldn't risk bringing the whole lot of them on top of us, though. Gunfire would be really audible.

The mercenary followed Amanda, too. He was chuckling and she just glared at him. "Don't tell me you actually have some of those," she said, looking back at Blanket. "Real ones, I mean."

He shook his head. "Nah." He reconsidered with a grin. "Well, not that I know about, anyway."

She rolled her eyes. "Let's get moving," she said. "We've been here for too long, anyway."

He went off in some other direction, and I couldn't see where Amanda and Blanket went. I knew when they were far away enough again, though, because I had another blackout.

When I came to, I was halfway up the 'multi-story thing', as Sam put it. Sam was well back of me and she wasn't filming. When I turned around to look at her she seemed apprehensive, as if she was expecting me to be angry. When I wasn't, she exhaled.

I wasn't sure I wanted to know what had happened or what I'd said. We didn't have time to worry about that now, anyway, and I didn't have the energy to deal with it. I kept climbing the stairs.

At least I recognised which window was Amanda's. I glanced into it and quickly realised that we wouldn't be able to sit and watch inside; we'd be too obvious. Even the lens of the camera would probably interrupt the smooth borders of the window. The light outside was too bright for it to be safe.

We sat together under the window while I tried to decide what we should do. Sam had recovered from whatever I'd said or done and was furtively taking out her camera, watching me closely to make sure it was okay. I nodded to give her permission. While I was struggling to try and think the ship made this huge _clunk._ Then, it began to move.

"Shit," Sam said, bracing herself on the walkway so she didn't topple over the edge of it. "What are we going to do about telling—" She stopped herself and made a face. "That's right," she said. " _Satellite_ phones." She took hers out and tapped away at it.

I put my ear against the wall with the intention of listening to Amanda and Blanket, but instead I must have fallen asleep. I had no idea how long I was out for. It can't have been that long because when I jolted awake again thinking I could hear Sam crying out for me, I still felt _exhausted._

She was beside me reviewing footage. As I went to reach out for her hand, I noticed movement on me wrist. I snatched my arm back and roughly bunched my sleeve up to find that fish spirit swimming around on my forearm again. I stood up a little to peek through the window. Blanket had gone to sleep cuddling the 3DS on the far side of the room, just far enough away so I couldn't get an hours' rest from the infernal creatures on my body. Sam and I couldn't go and sit on the other side, either, because if Amanda left the room at any point it would be via the corridor and she'd see us.

God, I… I wanted to _break_ something. I wanted to empty every single fucking bullet in this gun into Amanda – into anyone, really. I could punch through that window and trash the whole room and then set fire to the whole bloody ship. I couldn't, though. I couldn't do _anything._

I sat back down against the window. It could be _hours_ before Blanket woke up, and I very much doubted Amanda was going to go back to the cargo hold and give us the code anytime soon. Additionally, I had _no_ idea if I'd tied the speed boat up this time because I couldn't remember anything at all. We were _stuck_ here. God, I was just so _fucking tired_. That brief nap had just made it a million times worse, because now I was sore and uncomfortable again.

I felt tears running down my cheeks and I wiped them on my wrists.

Sam had been watching me. "Sweetie…"

I shook my head. "I'm okay, I'm just _so tired_."

She was quiet for a minute or so. "I wish I could take them from you," she said. "You know, just give you a night where you can finally get some sleep."

In a million years I never would have considered inflicting those things on Sam, but at that point I felt as if I was on the cusp of just losing my mind. If I lost it, well… Sam had saved me once before, that was true. But the only reason we'd made it out of Atlantis was because I was part of our escape. "Are you seriously offering?" I asked, crying about _that_ as well. "Because at this point, I'd probably almost beg you to just do it."

Sam looked apprehensive again. "Okay," she said, mustering her strength and holding her hands out. "Just… show me how."

My heart pounded. She wanted to do it right now? When I looked up at her beautiful face, I couldn't imagine wanting to make it look like mine did now. I hadn't slept or eaten for three whole days. My emotions were everywhere and I was blacking out. What if something happened and I couldn't get them back off her? I couldn't watch her deteriorate like I was. People died from lack of sleep, I couldn't do that to her, I just couldn't. Not for any reason. I might as well put a gun to my _own_ head.

"I know," she said gently. "I know what you're thinking. But we have to, you're going to go crazy and then we won't be able to do anything."

I looked at her outstretched hands. "I'm crazy because I haven't slept. And it's not like I can sleep properly here, is it? We'll do it tonight."

She seemed to accept that solution. "Okay," she said. "I'll hold you to that."

After that, we waited. I have no concept about how long for, because without anything to focus on I was drifting in and out of consciousness. I would have suggested that we actually _do_ try the transfer and _do_ find somewhere to hide and sleep, but one of the creepy mercenaries decided to stand on the edge of the walkway and _stare_ at us. Sam got up to stretch her legs at one point and he followed her around the corner and back. She looked spooked as she sat down across from me. I couldn't help but agree with her. The mercenaries seemed not to be attacking us, but their silent intensity was very unnerving and I didn't trust it. Just because they weren't shooting us didn't mean they wouldn't try anything else if they happened upon either of us sleeping. I shivered.

I had just been trapped in this kind of half-dream where I was standing in the wreckage of the Frost International mine, sifting through the debris for _something_. I didn't know what it was but I knew it was important and that I was missing it.

The pigeon landed on a fallen building in front of me. Sam was trying to wake me up, and when I opened my eyes, for just a fraction of a second I saw the pigeon across from me on the iron railing. It cocked its head at me and flew off into nowhere.

A big grin spread across my face. "It's back!" I said.

Sam shushed me. "The sun's coming up," she said. "What do we do?"

I looked from the railing to her. I didn't need to ask the question, I could tell that she hadn't seen it. She'd always been able to see the pigeon. There didn't seem to be any reason why she wouldn't… God, was I _hallucinating_? Whatever I was doing, I was also shivering and it wasn't even really that cold.

"Lara? Earth to Lara?" I tried very, very hard and was able to finally manage to wake up enough to focus on her as she spoke. "We can't stay here, where should we go?"

"Please don't ask me anything," I told her, moving a little into the early sunlight in the vain hope it would warm me. "Just make a decision and let's do it."

She looked nervous. "I guess we could go back to the cargo hold," she said. "I mean, I was just thinking before that if you punch numbers into a pad too many times, it wears them away a bit. Maybe we can figure out what the code is that way?"

That was better than nothing, which was the sum of all of the ideas I currently had. Well, besides sitting slumped against a wall and weeping with how tried I was.

I really didn't remember much of whatever happened next. I'd sat down on the stairs near the console, shivering and semi-conscious and Sam had set about doing whatever she was doing. I have this vague memory of putting my face against my knees and then the next thing I knew I was standing in front of the keypad and I was shouting.

What I was shouting, I have no recollection of _at all_. I don't even know _why_ I was shouting; I didn't feel angry. Sam had taken a few steps away from me and she looked really upset. I did know what I had been about to do, though, and that was about to key a number into the keypad.

"Oh six, twelve, Eighty-seven," I said, and then looked at Sam. "What's that number?"

She looked shell-shocked. "Lara, I have _no_ idea."

I looked down at the keypad and entered it. It flashed green and the buttons lit up.

"What the…" Sam closed some of the distance, taking out her camera. "How did you know that number?"

For a second I wondered if it might be something to do with the spirits, and then I felt my pocket vibrate. I took my phone out. I'd received another message – again from Macca – with the text, " _Lol, no idea. I thought it looked like a password. Worth a shot._ " That was obviously the end of a conversation. I scrolled up, and the first message of the bunch was, " _Hey, bit random I know but there's a piece of paper in an envelope here in the car and it has the number 061287# on it. Looks like it fell out of something. Might be useful right."_ I scrolled down; I'd had a whole conversation with him via text and I didn't remember a single thing about it.

I looked up at Sam; she was filming me. I read the conversation aloud to her and then said, "You know all those times you said you drunk texted men in uni and I didn't believe you?" She nodded. "I'm sorry." She laughed as I examined the console buttons. They weren't labelled very well, but I figured the green one was probably our best shot. I pressed it.

As it turned out, it _was_ for the door. When we reached the top of the stairs and tried the handle, it worked. Sam practically cheered. "Yes!" she said, and then turned to me. "I'd give you a high-five, but…"

"Later," I said with a grin.

Inside, there was a long staircase that lead down in a very slight arc around the edge of the hold. It went on forever, and I had been expecting to lose myself at some point during the hike down because of how tired I was. It didn't happen. My spirits were very active; they'd all moved to the far side of me. When Sam swore and checked her camera, I looked down at my body. Through the fabric of my top, I could see they were _glowing_.

"The Slave Stone must be down here," Sam said.

I wasn't sure what it was, but I supposed we were about to find out.

There was an innocuous door at the bottom of the stairway, and as I touched the handle I felt a sense of misgiving. I looked back at Sam and she looked up from the LCD screen which was pointed at the door. "Don't you think it's odd that Macca found the code just as we were about to try it?"

She shrugged. "Lara, a _pigeon spirit_ led us around a mine. Your body is covered in dangerous tattoo-spirit things that are sentient." Her eyes were wide. "And, like, _zombie centaurs that throw fireballs_."

She had a good point.

Through the door was vast open area with a massive aquarium suspended in the centre. The whole cargo hold was very harshly lit like a laboratory, and fluorescent bars overhead weren't the only source of light. The glass the aquarium was constructed with glowed faintly blue, as well. I couldn't imagine how that worked. Even though we'd just come out of the morning sun, I had to squint and put my hand above my eyes until they adjusted.

As if the spirits crawling around my back didn't tip me off, in the pit of my stomach I knew something was very wrong. I started shivering again. At least the new rush of adrenaline made it easy for me to focus again.

Sam had her camera trained on the aquarium, but it seemed to be empty. We couldn't really see the bottom of it, though, because it was raised and we needed to climb up another set of floating stairs onto a separate walkway to get to it.

As I stepped out onto the second level and approached the empty aquarium, I expected to see the Slave Stone, or the Scion, or something to that effect shielded inside the glass. It would make sense for Amanda to put them somewhere where no one could inadvertently touch them.

What I _didn't_ expect to see was a kneeling figure facing away from me and wearing what looked like a long dressing gown or some sort of tan cape. I looked across at Sam. We shared an anxious glance.

As I got closer, the person stood up. I stopped, my heart pumping. The figure didn't turn around, though, instead opening what I thought had been a cape into a pair of colossal wings. They spanned the whole length of the aquarium and were in silhouette against the light.

"No…" My breath caught in my throat and for a second I couldn't think at all. Under the wings the figure was wearing a white tracksuit that clung to her every curve. I knew those curves, even though I _wished_ I didn't.

Beside me, Sam had taken a step back. "Oh, my God…" she was repeated under her breath.

The woman turned and walked into the light.

That face had haunted my nightmares for three months, there wasn't any sort of chance I wouldn't recognise it. It didn't look dead, or undead, or ghostly, or anything I would have expected. So I recognised it, I just didn't believe it.

Jacqueline Natla.

There was victory in her smile. "I'm very pleased to see you again, Lara."


	33. Chapter 33

My first thought was that I was hallucinating. If I hadn't seen Sam's reaction, I actually don't think I would have believed it was really Jacqueline Natla. This just couldn't be happening, now, it couldn't.

I cycled through a series of possible interpretations: Amanda was playing a trick on us, it was the spirits somehow manifesting my worst nightmares, I actually _was_ dreaming, and a whole host of other far-fetched explanations that made less sense than what appeared to be the case. Jacqueline Natla was still alive, and Amanda had unearthed her and taken her prisoner.

Neither Sam nor I said anything, we just stared open-jawed at her.

The worst part about our shock was that Natla clearly _loved_ it. The amusement was plain on her face. "Oh, please," she said with that half-smile that used to make me blush. "I'm a _demigod._ It can't be _that_ much of a surprise."

Sam camera was by her side as she stared at Natla. "But you were _screaming_ …"

Natla's eyebrow flickered ever so slightly, but her smile didn't fade. "Yes, well, being set on fire and trapped in lava is not a very pleasant experience. Don't worry, though," her smile darkened somewhat, "you know what they say. What goes around comes around."

God, I felt sick. It didn't feel real. Nothing about her had changed at all except that her hair was slightly longer; she'd tied it at the nape of her neck with an elastic. Even in the tracksuit she looked sultry and beautiful and not at all like someone who'd been completely engulfed in flame three months ago.

I could see how thick the glass was even from some distance away from it, and that at least was a godsend. If it hadn't been there, I was certain I would have shot at her. All that would have been was a waste of bullets.

"You're awfully quiet, Lara," Natla commented, wandering up to the edge of the glass. "I'm sure that has something to do with how tired you clearly are." She leaned on one hip, smiling down at us. "People just aren't themselves when they're tired, are they?"

Sam inhaled sharply next to me, but didn't say anything else. I looked across at her, worrying about that.

Natla watched us both. Nothing about her pleasant expression faded, but she regarded us for too long for it to purely have been amusement. She was thinking, and that made my heart pound. When she spoke again, she still had that amiable tone but there was some gravity to it. "I'll tell you the same thing I told Amanda," she said. "I can tell you how to transfer those spirits you have on you to another surface. Temporarily or permanently."

It was at that point that it really hit home who we were dealing with. This was _Natla_ , and she practically defined the term 'ulterior motive'. We needed to start being _very_ careful. God, why did this have to happen when I was _so_ tired I could barely think?

"Of course you can," I said bitterly, really feeling my exhaustion. "But you won't. Not unless I give you whatever you want."

Her blond head tilted in assent. "You know me so well," she said. She put a hand up to the glass and drew one long, slender finger down the interior surface of it. It glowed brighter as she touched it. "In case you haven't noticed, Amanda has decided to detain me for the time being."

I took a breath. "And you want _me_ to get you out."

She laughed; it was an ironically pleasant sound. "No," she said. "Amanda plans to let me out eventually because the triumvirate can't function without me and my rituals. A short wait is of no concern. However, being in here does mean that I'm unable to take care of some business of my own."

Although we'd already guessed that Amanda had some functional interest in the Scion, actually hearing Natla confirm it made my stomach drop even further than it already had. I guessed despite the lack of Atlantis, the Scion _did_ work. After everything that had happened when I'd actually been in Atlantis with Natla, I just couldn't believe she thought she'd get any sort of audience with me. "You expect _me_ do ever do _anything_ for you?"

She ignored me; it was both confusing and completely infuriating. "We don't have much time. In the near future you're going to have both the Scion and the Slave Stone in your possession. Take the stone out and put it somewhere else; I don't care where."

Sam sounded far more determined than I felt. "We're not doing _anything_ for you, Natla," she said. "Anything."

She simply shrugged. "Then I suppose Lara won't be getting much sleep for a while."

I was still trying to process what she was saying, and with the adrenaline wearing off it was becoming harder and harder. "Wait a minute, 'we don't have much time'?"

Her smile deepened. "Amanda's coming."

Both Sam and I turned to look back towards the door. It was still shut.

Natla kept speaking. "Now here's where Amanda and I differ – and listen, because I think this point might be of some interest to you. Amanda will kill you if she thinks she needs to. Not at all gladly, but she'll do it. I, on the other hand, want you alive, Lara." Her tongue curled on the words 'want you'. I was deliriously tired and so very angry at her, and still she managed to get some sort of reaction from me when she turned on the charm. I _hated_ her for it. It couldn't possibly be real. "Better the devil you know, don't you think?"

I didn't trust myself at all with her. "How can I believe _anything_ you say, Natla?"

That smile. "I suppose you can't." There was some commotion outside. "Perhaps now you'll believe me that she's here, though."

Sam and I looked at each other, and then around the room. The whole hold was open and all walkways were transparent grates. The only place to hide was in the step of the short stairway between the levels. Sam and I would easily have fit there together, but not being able to touch her meant only one of us could. There was no question about who was going on there. When she hesitated, I nearly accidentally pushed her. I managed to stop myself at the last minute.

"How noble of you," Natla commented to be after I'd concealed Sam, and then carefully regarded my reaction to her assessment. My fists were clenched. "I bet now you're wishing you'd touched her as much as you could when you still had the chance."

Amanda burst through the door and had been right in the middle of shouting, "Where _is she_?" but her voice died on her lips when she saw me. "You!" she said, walking with long strides out onto ground floor and looking up at me. "Fuck _off_!" she yelled at me so loudly her voice was raw. The level of anger and emotion seemed over the top. "Just fuck off! You're going to _ruin everything_!"

"Just like you ruined my house?" I yelled back down to her. "Or like you're ruining all our lives?" I slipped my finger into the trigger of the rifle. I took it out when I saw Blanket rushing over to her, though. Like she always did when the grown-ups were shouting, she looked teary.

"Just get out, Lara!" Amanda ordered, waving her arm aggressively at me.

When Blanket heard my name she looked up and saw me. I smiled automatically at her, but the first thing she did when she recognised me was look absolutely terrified and take nervous handful of Amanda's long-sleeved top. _What?_

When I didn't answer Amanda immediately, she looked up at Natla. "This is _your_ fault!"

Natla looked thoroughly amused by us. "You can blame me if you wish," she said with exaggerated wisdom. "But the hallmark of a _true_ leader is someone who is able to accept that the blame is theirs when things go wrong." She leant a shoulder casually against the glass and checked her manicure. "You have _so much_ to learn before you ascend."

Amanda looked like she was about to _kill_ someone. "Why do I bother?" she asked herself aloud, sighing audibly. Then, she closed her eyes and turned her palms outward. When nothing happened she opened them again, seeing Blanket and swearing. "Go back to our room and lock the door," she instructed rather harshly. When Blanket didn't move at all, she gave her a slight push. "Go! I'll buy you more Pokémon or whatever it is you like. _Go_!"

Blanket looked apprehensively at me, and then sprinted towards the door. I could hear her little feet on the stairs leading out onto the deck. When Amanda looked back up, I noticed movement to my side. Sam was still there, and she was gesturing at me. She was pointing at the other side of the room, but that was all I could see without turning my head to look directly at her and alerting Amanda that she was there.

Well, now Blanket was gone, I had a clear shot at Amanda. I raised the AK47 at roughly the same time as Amanda rolled up her sleeves and wound up again. I was about to shoot her when the air around her thickened and surged upwards. Her tattoos – or one of them, really – swirled up her arms, off her hands and into the air, glowing a deep ochre red. It twisted and coiled and writhed above her head before finally settling into a definite shape.

When the shape solidified there was a colossal beast swimming in the air, its tentacles and exposed entrails coiling around its long body. Its face looked vaguely mammalian, but the rest of it was the stuff of nightmares. Put quite simply, it was a _monster_. A monster the size of a London bus, and it was staring at me.

My gun still raised, I backed away from the railing, gaping at it. "What _is_ that?"

Amanda looked probably even more tired and fed-up than I felt. "If you knew anything about Aboriginal history, you'd know it's a Bunyip," she said, and then closed her eyes and tried to concentrate.

I took that opportunity to look over at Sam who was pointing to the other side of the room. 'Over there', she mouthed, 'go over there'. Being so fuzzy, I didn't understand what she meant at first. I just looked over the other side of the room to see what she was pointing at. In the process, I locked eyes with Natla, who could also see Sam from where she was suspended.

It was at that moment that I realised Sam wanted me to get Amanda's back to the door so she could get out of it. Natla clearly knew what Sam meant, and was looking between us.

Natla smiled slightly and opened her mouth to say something about it.

I shook my head frantically and threw my arms up, looking back over toward Sam.

She closed her mouth again. This time, her smile was triumphant as she spoke. "Very well. Remember what I told you to do, Lara."

I swallowed, and ran around the back of the room along the railing. I couldn't feel my feet connecting with the grate at all; actually, I couldn't really feel anything. I didn't feel real. I suspected that it was a combination of adrenaline, endorphins and exhaustion.

When I reached the other side, Amanda opened her eyes again. They were clouded like she'd been dead for several hours, and she was completely motionless. It was chilling.

The beast stirred, spiralling upward. When it looked back at me, I could see sentience. Then, it _dove_ at me, mouth wide open. I could see its many layers of snaggled teeth and all the way down its throat into its deep stomach as its mouth closed over me. I _screamed_.

Then, something odd happened. I wouldn't say I fell unconscious; not like I had been all night on the ship. But the world around me _swirled_ for a fraction of a second, like water being stirred. When I opened my eyes, the beast had its jaws closed on thin air and I was standing beside one dinner-plate sized red eye.

When I looked down, my hands were glowing. Ahead of me, through the glass of Natla's aquarium, I saw Sam slip out the door. Natla had been watching her. As the door gently closed, Natla turned to me, arms crossed. I could see my shocked reflection in the glass. Natla, in comparison, look perfectly relaxed. Knowing, even.

The beast recovered and made another attempt at me, and I was almost too late again. This time, I dodged it in a far more pedestrian manner: with a tumble roll. I didn't execute it at all gracefully, but I couldn't feel a single thing.

I landed near the edge of the walkway and when I looked over the edge, Amanda was still standing on the ground, perfectly still and with her palms facing outward. The third time the beast tried to devour me, I rolled off the edge, dropping awkwardly on the floor of the cargo hold.

I didn't know exactly what was going on, but I'd put money on Amanda being the nexus of it. I raised my rifle and squeezed the trigger, releasing a good five or six rounds at her. The blasted thing had unbelievable recoil and I don't know if any of them would have actually connected. I'd never find out, though, because the beast had descended ahead of me and opened its mouth to swallow them. I fired a couple more for good measure, but they had no effect. Well, I didn't want to waste my bullets.

I tried to lead the monster away from her; up walkways, stairwells, under the aquarium, but it seemed to have no substance. It would seep up through surfaces like gas, and it moved through the air with the grace and speed of a swimming crocodile.

I didn't know what I was going to do. I needed to get to Amanda, but I didn't know how I would do that. The monster certainly didn't want me to.

In the end, even loads of adrenaline and magical spirits couldn't rescue me from my fatigued muscles and my legs gave way as I jumped down to the ground level again. I couldn't get back up, either, my arms were shaking so much. It was like one of those awful dreams when I was desperately trying to run away but I couldn't move fast enough to escape the monsters chasing me. Except this time, it was real.

I edged backwards on the floor pulling my jelly legs after me, looking up and the creature. It didn't wait a single second, it just closed its mouth over me.

It was like being plunged into a body of water in the middle of the night. I didn't know which way was up or where I was, I just struggled weakly as I tried to find air. There seemed to be nothing though; no surface, no floor, nothing. Just water.

That didn't stop me from trying. I swam around in the dark with my eyes wide open and burning from the salt. I was still breathless from the exertion and and my chest was heaving, desperately trying to take a lungful of fresh air where there was none. I clenched my throat shut as tightly as I could, not letting any water in my mouth.

When as a last ditch attempt to not drown I threw my hands over my mouth like I'd seen Sam do in Egypt, I noticed my hands were glowing. I stared at them.

The water turned like a tumble washer and for just a second, I felt like I _was_ the water. Like everything around me was just an extension of my being and it was in complete control of me. It was an incredible feeling of connection and belonging, and being one piece in an infinite cosmological puzzle taking places over forty thousand years. All around me, aquatic creatures churned.

I was _not_ going to drown.

When I did finally take a gasping mouth of air, the sound of my ragged breathing shocked me. It was the acoustics of the cargo hold, not underwater.

Something was blocking the light, and when I blinked and my eyes cleared, I was face-to-face with Amanda. Who had lied to me, stolen from me, burnt down our house and not tried to kill me.

"Fuck you," I hissed, and kneed her in the stomach. When she collapsed I shakily climbed on top of her, clamping both hands around her throat before she could summon that creature onto me again.

She didn't notice at first, but after a moment of having her throat constricted, she gasped and crammed her eyes shut. When they flew open, they were living again. She panicked, grappling with my hands and struggling. Unfortunately for me her slender limbs were sharp and when she elbowed me in the arm I lost a grip on her throat. She coughed.

"Where are they?" I demanded her, thinking of the Scion and the Slave Stone. "Where did you put them?"

She _glared_ at me. "As if I'd tell you," she said, venom audible.

"They're in her backpack," said a neutral voice from above us. We both looked up; Natla was leaning against the glass, watching us.

"Who's fucking side are you on?" Amanda yelled up at her as I roughly tried to flip her.

"Well," Natla began as I tussled with Amanda. "If I get my way – and by the way, I almost always do – we'll _all_ _three of us_ be on the same side," she cocked her head down at us wrestling. "An eternity of watching you two take shots at each other would be the height of entertainment."

Amanda and I had managed to get ourselves in a position where neither of us could move without allowing the other an opportunity. It was incredibly frustrating because if I'd been in condition, I would have overpowered her with little to no effort. With my shaking muscles I was barely as strong as she was. I glared down at her. "What is _wrong_ with you," I asked her, genuinely hoping for an answer. "Larson was such a good person. Where did he go wrong for you to team up with the woman who destroyed his life?"

Her face crumpled; I'd hit a nerve. "Don't you fucking get it, Lara? It's _because_ of his stupid sense of morality that he ended up in fucking chains to that bitch for years. It's _all bullshit_." I frowned down at her. "There is no right and wrong, there's just survival and destruction, victory and defeat. You're an archaeologist," she said, making a perverse kind of sense and reminding me of something I'd been told on Yamatai. "You know history is littered with examples of _good_ empires and _good_ people who were enslaved, exploited and murdered. It's just all crap."

"That doesn't mean you should stop trying to—"

She pushed my face with the arm I had trapped beside my neck, interrupting me. "Oh _shut up_ ," she said. "Your righteous crap makes me sick. I don't know what that woman sees in you. I don't know what _anyone_ sees in you." I opened my mouth to yell hoarsely at her, but she interrupted me. "And by the way if you think you can actually kill me with those things on your body, get a fucking grip. I practically write the book on spirits from the Dreaming. Just _go home and play in your sandbox_."

I could barely breath I was so angry. I couldn't think, I could barely even speak. "Thanks to you I don't _have_ a home," I told her, and when she raised her eyebrows at me in challenge I _lost it._ I clenched my fist and hit her again, and again, and again with it. I hit her so hard my hand went numb and my knuckles bled while she screamed insults at me and tried to shield herself. I was too tired for this, I couldn't deal with any of it. Just _fuck her._

After she stopped moving, I crawled off her awkwardly on shaking legs. My eyes and cheeks were wet; I wiped them hurriedly with my hands before Natla could see as I rolled Amanda's unconscious body and pried off her pack. When I opened it up, the result was immediate; the spirits all fled to my back. That was confirmation enough for me. I closed the backpack and slung it over my shoulder.

Natla was clapping slowly as I stiffly climbed the stairs up the main walkway. "That was quite impressive," she said. "Although perhaps beating her half to death was a little extreme."

I had been intending on making a quick exit, but something about Natla's tone and her entertainment in my suffering riled me. Especially that slow, steady clap. It was almost _taunting_ me. I turned and took a few heavy steps towards her aquarium. "You're next," I told her, and jabbing a finger in the air at her. "Except I won't stop at half."

She was still wearing that _infuriating_ smile. "Of course," she said, again ignoring my threat. "Do what I say and then return and I will show you how to transfer those spirits."

I wasn't keen on her use of 'show me' instead of 'tell me'. "You're awfully calm for someone who's trapped in a tank," I told her, trying to find her Achilles heel. "It must hurt to know you were bested by one of those _mortals_ you feel so superior to."

She didn't sound very hurt. "I play the long game," she said, unaffected by my anger. "Because _I_ have all the time in the world."

That reference reminded me how long I'd been without sleep, and just how completely useless I was becoming physically and emotionally. I turned to leave, not wanting to hear another word out of her. As I opened the door, though, she called out to me in manner of an afterthought. "Oh, by the way," she said. I didn't turn around to face her, but I did stop to listen. "As personal thanks for all that media coverage you so generously gave me recently, I had Amanda organise a little present for you. It shouldn't be too hard to find."

I frowned, but didn't ask for further information. I supposed I would find out what she meant.

The stairs turned out to be very difficult for me to negotiate. My muscles grew tired after just a few steps and had to keep stopping to rest them before continuing. When I finally reached the top and walked out toward the deck, there were a several bodies lying face-down on it. The whole area was wet.

I wondered if Amanda had something to do with that; as odd as it seemed to murder your own employees. She was grumpy enough, I wouldn't have put it past her.

I wasn't sure how long Amanda would be unconscious; I hoped long enough for us to get away. I couldn't find Sam or Blanket anywhere. Amanda's room was open, though, so I shut myself inside it and took out the phone. I texted Sam, ' _Where are you?_ '

Literally five seconds later I got a reply that read, ' _In boat tied at bottom of ladder with hysterical sobbing child. S.O.S.'_

I made my way through the creepy mercenaries to the stern. When I leaned over the edge, I could see Sam and Blanket in the speedboat below. It certainly was a sight for my tired, sore eyes. "How did you get her?" I called down.

She grinned up and me and held something up. When she jingled it, I realised it was the set of keys that she'd stolen from the mercenary last time.

 _Sam_ , I thought, and went to take a step over the edge onto the ladder when I felt a firm gloved hand on my shoulder. "Where do you think you're going?" a voice said. When I turned, it was the man from the helicopter. He had his mask on.

"I'm leaving the ship," I said, hoping false confidence would work on him, too.

I couldn't see if it did or didn't, because of the mask. I quickly found out, though. "Drop the bag and the gun," he said. "I know who you are." The nose of his AK47 pressed between my collarbones and I did exactly what he told me to. "You!" he called out to a group of the mercenaries. "Are you going to stand there like statues, or are you going to get the kid back on the ship?"

They all rushed on mass to the side of the ship, rifles out.

"Sam!" I shrieked, "Go! Go now!"

I could hear her fumbling around far below. "Lara! Help! I have no idea how to drive one of these!"

I couldn't say anything else, because the man put a firm glove over my mouth. The gun was cutting into my skin, but mercifully I heard the sound of a motor and after the painful sound of metal dragging against metal, and then the motor took off.

Several of the mercenaries jumped over the edge of the ship after it like lemmings. It was such an illogical, life-threatening thing to do that I couldn't help but stare at them for a second, forgetting the gun at my neck.

"You're going to pay for that," the man told me, pistol-gripping my chin and making me look forward again. I kneed him in the groin and when the barrel of the gun dropped I went for my rifle. Unfortunately, once I was down I couldn't get up again. He recovered quickly and came straight at me. I squeezed the trigger but my shaking arms coupled with the terrible recoil meant the bullets were going absolutely everywhere but actually into his body.

In no time, he was on top of me.

I had a very strong, very vivid flashback to Yamatai. I could even smell dirt-caked clothes and bad breath as I had Russian insults shouted into my face. I lay there on the ground, feeling the soil and grass poking into my back before I actually realised I _wasn't_ in Yamatai and I'd passed out.

I came to when a big splash of water hit me directly in the face. I coughed, rolling onto my side and pushing him away with the hand that had… been against his throat? How did I…? I looked at it and in the gap of skin I'd touched between his mask and his uniform, I saw _movement._

He was completely ignoring me and clutching at his neck as he ripped his mask off. Confused, I tried to crawl away from him. As I did so, he coughed once again and a torrent of water poured out of his mouth. He kept coughing and coughing as he sank to his knees and clasping at his chest, each time more and more water gushed out. The amount of water bubbling from his lips seemed to be far more than could actually be physically contained in a person's lungs.

It wasn't very long at all before he was unconscious on the deck with water trickling out of his mouth as if someone had left a tap on inside him.

As I stared across at him, I saw a familiar pattern on his neck. It was the fish that had been squatting on my forearm for the better part of three days. I leaned over and pressed my fingertips to it and it eagerly transferred back onto me.

I tried to stand; it took several attempts. All the mercenaries left on the deck were staring at me as I did so, and I can only imagine how it looked. None of them seemed like they were about to attack me, though. It was odd, I thought the natural thing to do would be to assist a colleague in danger. I couldn't think about it now, though. I didn't want to spend another second on this ship than I needed to.

I heaved myself up onto the edge and looked down. The deep and rolling waves were gone, replaced by much clearer, brighter water. I wondered how far we'd travelled; we must be moving reasonably fast because the ship was already well clear of the mercenaries who'd jumped a minute ago. I could see an island on the horizon and the whole scene looked markedly tropical.

Time to find out if my satellite phone really _is_ waterproof, I thought, grabbing a life jacket from the wall and jumping off the edge.


	34. Chapter 34

It was _long_ jump down to the surface of the water.

I hadn't really considered that until I was falling through the air along the hull of the ship and by then it was too late to change my mind and use the ladder. As I watched the surface rush towards me, I braced for impact and expected it to really hurt. Fortunately I was too tired and numb to care when it did.

The sea was _warm._

When I opened my eyes and blinked them against the salt water, I was surrounded by towering beds of coral. From the surface above, dappled light was filtering down and falling on textures and shapes which were every colour of the rainbow. It was so intense that the sea floor and the forests reaching up around me looked to all the world like someone had taken a paint palette and just emptied the contents it into the water. There were bright oranges and yellows to deep purples and greens, and in amongst all the colours I could see the sunlight glinting off the bodies of a million different fish. It was so surreal and so beautiful that for a moment I wondered if perhaps it might be the spirits. However, when I swum through schools of fish towards the surface of the water, they scattered en masse. It was all real.

Even in the state I was in, the abundance of life and beauty around me was _incredible._

When I reached the surface and took a big gulp of air, I turned in the direction the cargo ship had been travelling in time to see it disappearing along the water. Good riddance, I thought bitterly as I rubbed my eyes.

Before I made any sort of attempt to swim to the island I could see in the far distance, I took my phone out and inflated my life vest. According to Google Maps, I was on the outer edge of the Great Barrier Reef, off the coast of Green Island near Cairns. I looked up from the screen; that must be the land I could see on the horizon. I texted Sam my coordinates anyway, and added, " _I'm okay. I hope you're okay, too."_

Then, I began the arduous task of trying to get myself somewhere where Sam wouldn't be looking for a bobbing head in a vast, empty ocean of water. It was a harder task than I'd anticipated. The waves were long and difficult to navigate, and the fact my muscles were not cooperating didn't make anything any easier.

I have no idea how long it was before I gave up, but I could feel the skin on my face was uncomfortably hot. Brilliant, I thought. On top of everything I'm going to get sunburnt, too.

I stopped trying and just floated there. It was _hopeless_ and I wanted to either cry or shout _,_ but there was no point. God, why wouldn't my legs just _work_?

While was agonising about what I should do and getting disproportionately angry and upset, something occurred to me. The spirits had helped me before at Windjana Gorge and before when I was fighting the Bunyip, even though I hadn't actually asked them to. If involuntarily I could somehow get the spirits to assist me, _surely_ I could do it voluntarily? Amanda had clearly found a way to control her spirits. I tried to remember how I'd seen her do it, but the only image I had was of her with closed eyes.

Well, closing my eyes was _not_ going to be a great difficulty for me, given the circumstances. I did it, taking a few steady breaths like I did when I was pointing my arrow at a target. I wasn't sure what came next, though, and while I was trying to figure that out I nodded off again. The sound of the water moving underneath me was hypnotic.

The spirits stirred on my skin.

I under my hands, I felt the rough scales of crocodile skin. I grabbed a hold of it. No sooner had I done so, it _took off_ along the surface and I had mash my eyes shut as salt water sprayed up all around me.

It didn't take me to Green Island. It took me all the way to the shore of the mainland. In between blinking and trying to protect my eyes, I could see a large town on the coast. The crocodile carried me down into a tributary beside it, disappearing into nothing when it should have reached the shore. Alone again, I crawled onto the sand and just lay there for a minute or two, staring at the sky and feeling so awfully heavy now I was out of the water.

Despite feeling like I was made of lead, I had a smile on my face: I'd done it. I'd made the spirits come, and now I was on the shore. _And_ we had the Slave Stone and the Scion, _and_ we'd rescued Blanket. Natla's dangerous calmness was of some concern to me, though. I didn't like it at all, but at the moment, all the cards were in _my_ hand. We'd beaten her once before, hadn't we?

I tried to figure out what happened next, pushing through all the discomfort and fatigue to focus on trying to find an answer to that question.

The first thing we had to do was deliver Blanket back to Old Johnson and somehow figure out how to wake him up. I didn't like that the only two people in the world I was certain knew how to do that were Natla and Diane; and to a certain extent Amanda could probably work it out, too. I didn't like _any_ of those choices. After what I'd done, Diane certainly wouldn't help me, and she didn't seem the type of person that would respond to threats or blackmail. Natla just could not be trusted under any circumstance and Amanda… _fuck_ her. She was probably our best option at this point, and I _hated_ her.

I sat up and slowly managed to pull myself to stand. If Sam had Blanket, perhaps I could finally get a nice long sleep and be at least somewhat functional again. That reminded me; Sam still probably thought I was out on the reef somewhere. I texted her to let her know I'd made it to Cairns.

She messaged back very quickly again. " _Blanket seriously starts bawling her eyes out whenever I just say your name. I know you said you aren't great with kids, but that's almost a superpower_. _It's like that time I bought those plants for your windowsill and literally as soon as I'd given them my credit card number the plants started to die. I hadn't even touched them._ "

I found myself laughing. Sam alternated between loving things to death and completely neglecting them while she was working on projects. I texted back, " _I hope you're better with children than you are with plants and pets_. _I'm going to be very upset if we meet up and Blanket is has fleas and root-rot. Where are you?"_

While I was waiting for her to reply, I walked painfully slowly through the sand and up to a six-lane highway. I didn't even need to check Google maps, because just from standing there I could actually see all the highrise hotels. There are _beds_ in there, I thought, and started walking along the shoulder towards them like a zombie. As I laboured alone the bitumen, putting one foot in front of the other and willing myself not to fall over, people in their cars were staring at me. It was only when someone who had been waiting outside a car dealership looked at me with alarm and ran back inside that I realised I still had the AK47 around my neck and the inflated life vest on. I must have looked absolutely mad.

I took them both off and bundled the rifle inside the deflated vest and shoved three quarters of it inside my bag. My bag was already very full with Amanda's shoved inside it, but the rifle was concealed enough to not rouse suspicion.

On my quest for a bed, I passed a smaller, boutique hotel that had ' _VACANCY'_ hanging over the driveway. The highrise hotels were still some distance away, so given how exhausted I was, I wondered if it might just be worth checking into a dodgy little hotel out here instead. How bad could it really be?

Which I was trying to make a decision, a car had stopped at the lights nearby and I could _feel_ them watching me. I was getting rather used to that feeling and I was too tired to care, really, until one of the men shouted, "Hey, Lara!" I deliberately didn't turn my head, but that didn't stop him. "Still waiting for _Sam_?" I didn't like the way he said her name, but, again, I didn't let him know I was paying any attention to him. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him put his fingers up in a V-shape and stick his tongue between them. I made a disgusted noise. What _animals._ I couldn't be bothered dealing with any more of that, so I just went instead the gates of the motel.

I walked slowly into reception, happy to be out of the hot sun and away from cars full of rowdy men. The receptionist just gaped at me for a moment and then stood up with surprise. "It's you!" she said, obviously recognising me. "Oh, man, you look like you've been… did someone force you to do it?"

I just squinted at her a moment. What on earth was she on about? "No one's forced me to do anything," I said. "I just want a room."

She looked like she didn't believe me for one single second. Leaning forward over the counter, she looked me up and down. "Wow," she breathed. "Wow…"

I looked down my body to see what the fuss was about. I was soaking wet, caked with sand and I had fresh bruises all over me. Also, my knuckles were raw and my arm had been bleeding for some reason. I gingerly touched the wound; it had stopped now. All of that was in addition to how bad I already looked from not having slept. At least none of the spirits appeared to be visible.

Oh, well. All of that hardly mattered now. "I'm fine," I tried to reassure her, but my voice was still very hoarse. "Really, I just want a room."

The receptionist looked genuinely concerned. "Just let me know if you need the police," she told me, accepting my credit card. "I can't believe some of the things my friends have been saying about you. If they saw you now they'd shut their big mouths. Seriously, if you need the police…"

I didn't understand why she was saying all of this to me, but I was too tired to even bother engaging her in a conversation about it. I just entered my PIN and accepted the key, letting her show me to my room.

It was a suite with two bedrooms and it looked about twenty years old. I couldn't have cared less at that point, I just shut the door and tried to undress. My arms were so weak and so shaky I could hardly get my long-sleeved top off, and I actually fell over and smacked my head on the wall while I was stepping out of my trousers. I threw them all in the bathtub and just lay on the bed. I think my arm was bleeding again, but it would just have to sort itself out because I couldn't be bothered with it.

While I was thinking about Sam and Blanket, I realised I'd been mid conversation with them on the way here. I leaned over the side of the bed and took my phone out of my backpack.

There were four text messages and a missed call, so I selected them. " _Right now? I don't know, somewhere on Bruce Hwy apparently. Min & Bree drove up from Sydney at a zillion miles an hour after I told them what was going on last night. Where are you? We'll pick you up." _The next one read, " _Hey, not sure if you got my previous message. Where are you?"_ and then the third one just said, " _Holy fuck have you seen the news?_ " Then there was a missed call.

I was too tired for any of that media rubbish, so I didn't bother hopping online to check it. I just texted back, " _New Chalon, Bruce Hwy, Room 24. xx"_

I had put my head back down on the pillow when I remembered I'd seen the number '4' and only read three of them. I had a whole internal debate about moving again, but in the end my curiosity managed to overcome my fatigue and I held my phone over my face.

The fourth message was from Macca. " _hey sam told us you are in cairns which is great because were on the A6. we will prob be there in about 4 hrs. which hotel are you staying at."_

I thought about those guns Macca had; if I could get ammo for them, they'd be a hundred times better than the annoying rifle I was currently trying to use. Knowing I was four hours away from having trustworthy firearms made me feel a little better. I sent him the same message I'd sent Sam about the hotel, and then realised it had kisses at the end of it. I sighed. It would just have to do.

Once I'd put the phone away and relaxed again, all the adrenaline started to wear off and I ended up drifting in and out of consciousness. At one point, I woke up by the window and given that in a bra and knickers the spirits were visible, that was a concern. I couldn't risk sleep-walking and having other people see them. I took some rope from my backpack and tied my wrist to the bed just in case. That ended up being pointless, because some time later I found myself in the arm chair with the rifle across my lap and a loose piece of rope dangling from my arm.

I sighed. Sam couldn't get here fast enough with Blanket, that was for sure.

Since I was already in the chair, I just sat there, staring at the rifle across my bare thighs and wondering how it had got there. I could just imagine Natla in her tank have a right laugh about my state and what it was doing to me. She probably found the whole situation incredibly amusing; I wanted to _kill_ her for it. Her, and Amanda, too. I couldn't really safely kill either of them until these spirits were off me, though, because I needed to make sure there was someone left alive who knew how to get rid of them and wake Old Johnson. That reminded me of the deal Natla had tried to cut with me on the ship.

I ran my hand over my face; talk about deals with the devil. She had given me some very specific instructions: separate the Stone and the Scion. Why, I just had to wonder. Did they interact if they were together? Were they more powerful together? God, I was too tired to care. I won't lie, I was tempted just to say to hell with everything and do what she said. I wanted these things off me and somewhere safe where no one could ever use them to harm another person. But who knew if Natla was even telling the truth about being willing to help me? The only thing I knew for sure was that following her instructions meant helping her with her agenda and I didn't want to be part of that.

On the other hand… maybe she'd known I wouldn't follow her instructions and told me to do the exact opposite of what she actually wanted?

I groaned. What a headache, and it required a level of thinking I just couldn't achieve at that moment.

There was a loud knock on the door, and my heart jumped. I looked down at the rifle in my hands, and stood slowly and painfully up. The list of things that ached now needed to include 'soles of my feet'. I was hobbling over to the door, gun ready, when I caught sight of the tattoos fading from my skin.

God, I could have _cried_ with relief. "Sam?"

"Lara! It's us! Open up!" I did, and quickly, because she sounded upset. However, when I opened the door I saw from her face that what I'd thought was 'upset' was actually 'excited'.

With one step, she took the rifle out of my hands and tossed it somewhere. It clattered across the floor and while I was worrying about the sound that made, she threw her arms around me. I nearly fell over because I could barely keep myself upright, let alone an enthusiastic girlfriend. She held me, completely disregarding my bleeding arm and drew me up into a deep kiss.

Somewhere in the background, I could hear other footsteps and Bree saying, "Aww!"

I was too tired to care if anyone was watching us, and Sam was making these sweet little desperate noises that were far too endearing to consider pushing her away. Instead, I put a hand around her back at let her keep going as much as she wanted.

"You want us to maybe come back later…?" That was Min's voice, and there was a smile in it.

Sam finally leant back. "Sorry," she said, very unsubtly wiping her mouth and then taking me in another bear hug. "It's just so good to be able to do this again!" She let go of me and looked down my body. I was only in my underwear – nothing that _everyone_ hadn't seen by now, given their interest in the spirits – but without the spirits I could see just how beaten up I was. "Whoa," Sam said, turned me around. "You seriously look like someone took a crowbar to you."

I was about to comment on that when I saw a little face peeking out from behind Bree's back. "Blanket," I acknowledged her, and for a second she looked like she was going to cry again. I didn't understand; she'd been so pleased to see me back in Western Australia. "What's wrong?" I asked her. "It's me – Lara. You know me!"

She didn't look like she knew me at all, but at least after some coaxing she edged up from behind Bree and came over to me. She regarded me with both suspicion and concern for a good few seconds, and then she visibly relaxed. "You're not her," she said, and then she gave me a hug around my middle, too.

I didn't know what 'her' she meant. "Nope," I told her, tussling her hair. "I'm just me!"

While I was looking down at Blanket, I noticed Bree lean in toward Min and murmur something. They were both looking at me. "What?" I asked.

Bree didn't answer me straight away, she looked to Sam. "Maybe we should just tell her now, instead."

Min mimed strangling Bree and then threw her hands up to the sky. "Why do I bother?" she asked herself.

Sam looked a little angry Bree had said that. "Fuck, Bree," she said, rolling her eyes. "No, let's wait until after she's slept," she said, looking back at me and putting a warm hand on my cheek. "Seriously, just let her sleep."

I wondered if someone who'd slept would have been able to figure out what they were talking about, because I certainly couldn't. "Tell me what?" When no one responded, I repeated, "Tell me what? You can't just say all that and then _not_ tell me."

Sam looked back at me. I could see her face cycle through a series of expressions that meant she was actually considering keeping quiet. I was too tired for this. "Just tell me. I'm a big girl, now."

Sam winced. "Fine," she said, defeated. She took a breath. "Lara, whatever crazy video you made while you were drunk at Min's, it's gone viral."

I didn't know what she meant. "You're the camera nut, not me," I said blankly. "If there are any videos, they're yours."

They all looked at each other. Sam swallowed and gestured at Min. "Give me your phone. The data speeds on my satellite one are crap."

Min reached into the side pocket of her jeans, but didn't hand it to her straight away. "You sure about this?" Sam just gave her a look and snatched it from her, immediately opening the browser and tabbing through the history.

"Can I see?" Blanket asked innocently.

Everyone looked horrified. "Let's play Pokémon," Bree said, coming to the rescue. "Come on, I'll get my 3DS, too. Maybe I'll beat you, this time." She led Blanket out onto the balcony, taking her handbag with her. She leaned into the room before she closed the door. "I'm not kidding, either. A _four year old_ can beat me at the game that basically raised me. There's irony."

Neither of the other two looked very interested in what she was saying because they were both looking at the screen of Min's Note II.

Sam gave it to me. "If I'd known you were going to be like this when you were passed out drunk, I'd force you to drink _way_ more often." She wasn't smiling, though. In fact, she was wincing as if she expected me to yell at her. "Don't worry, though, I've got my dad's legal people working on a total ban for this."

I looked down at the screen. The thumbnail for the video was blurry, but I could clearly see it was me sitting in front of Min's computer. That was odd, I'd never used Min's computer.

I pressed play and watched the screen.

In the video, I'd reached up and adjusted her webcam and sat down. It all started fairly mundanely; I tucked my hair behind my ears and put my hands between my knees. It was the way I always sat, so it _must_ be me. I must have been quite, quite drunk to have been capable of doing this and not remembering it.

I didn't seem drunk, though, and when I spoke, I wasn't slurring at all. "Hi, Sam," I said. "I'm here all by myself. It's the first night I've spent without you in ages. It's pretty lonely, actually."

Watching it, I made a face at the phone. I could see all the ways the tabloid media could jump right on _that_ sentence. No wonder the others were worried about it.

"I just couldn't stop thinking about you, so I decided to make you a video to show you what you're missing out on tonight…" I watched my hand rise to the zip of the hoodie I was wearing – which now that I noticed, wasn't even mine – and very, very slowly undo it while I stared directly into the camera.

God, I would _never_ do that. I didn't even do that when Sam was _behind_ the camera and when I knew she'd delete it. I wouldn't be anywhere _near_ that suggestive on someone else's computer!

I paused the video and looked up at the other two. "I would _never_ do that!"

Sam looked bleak. "Keep going."

My stomach dropping, I watched her for a moment, worried, and then took it off pause.

When my zip got to the bottom, 'I' opened my hoodie and slipped it off. Underneath there was only a bra – and it looked like the kind of bra Sam would wear, not me. I grabbed my breasts anyway and pushed them together, exaggerating my cleavage. "You know how much you like these…" I was saying, still smiling at the camera. "If not, let me remind you…" I reached behind my back in a very smooth movement for someone as tired as I had been back then, and unhooked the bra. It didn't come off straight away, though, I teased the camera with the fabric for a few seconds before finally throwing it to the side.

If I had any doubt that the person on the camera was me, it faded then. Those were my breasts. That body was my body. God… how drunk must I have been? Had I somehow been sleep-walking and done this when I'd been having those blackouts?

God, I could barely watch it. It was like watching a horror movie. For Sam to say it had gone viral meant that _millions_ of people had seen this. I'd watched this much and I already felt like I was about to throw up, and it only got so, _so_ much worse.

"I'm so fucking horny for you right now," 'I' was saying, using language I'd never use and phrases that would _never_ come out of my mouth. "I'm thinking about you eating out my pussy and just wishing you could be here right now to actually do it…"

I shook my head. I couldn't even breathe, but it was like a car crash: I couldn't look away.

"I'm imagining your fingers inside me right now. Do you want to see how wet it's making me, Sam?" 'I' was asking the camera.

The real me took a deep breath. "No!" I begged the screen, watching it. "No, no, no…"

'I' stood, slowly unzipping my trousers and taking them and my knickers off. Then, 'I' sat back in Min's office chair, smiled at the webcam and completely spread-eagled. You could see _everything_ , and in crystal clear Full HD detail. God, _millions of people_ had seen this. "Guess I'm going to need to have some fun without you," I said, and then proceeded to start masturbating, whispering Sam's name.

I stopped the video right there. I didn't care if there was any other important information at the end, I couldn't watch it.

God, I… I couldn't breathe.

In amongst all the horror and disgust and panic I felt, I could hear Natla's voice in my head, repeating to me what she'd said as I left the ship. _"As personal thanks for all that media coverage you so generously gave me recently,"_ she had told me, " _I had Amanda organise a little present for you. It shouldn't be too hard to find."_

This had Natla _all over it_. It was _everything_ I feared and loathed and dreaded and it was now all over the internet. Had I been drugged? Was I already someone's slave?

God, Natla, what have you done… what have _I_ done?


	35. Chapter 35

I couldn't breathe, I couldn't. I mean, I could feel air going in and out of my throat, there just didn't seem to be enough oxygen in it and no matter how hard and fast I drew breath, my vision just greyed and my ears rang.

I clutched my chest as if it would help, and pushed the phone back at Sam. I couldn't get it far enough away from me.

"Lara, it's okay, we'll figure it out," Sam was saying, trying to calm me down. It didn't work, though, because she sounded really upset by my reaction, herself. "My dad's people are on it, it won't be up for long and they'll come up with some explanation for—"

"There _is_ no explanation for it!" I interrupted her, just focusing on trying to stay conscious. "Oh, God…" Those awful, crass images were burnt into my retinas. I could remember it all in horrible details, 'my' mouth breathily forming the word _Sam_ , 'my' hands between my legs and just… God. Just… _God!_ And _millions of people_ had seen it and were probably watching it right now. "Natla said she had a present for me, but I never thought…"

Min and Sam shared a glance. There was something in it that I didn't like. "You think I actually did it!" I accused Sam.

She looked uncomfortable. "Lara, I know what you look like," she said. "That's you." When I went to say something to that, she put her hands up. "Look, I've done my fair share of stupid things when I've been really drunk and you have those things on you—"

I just stared at her, my mouth open. "You think I did it," I realised. "You're my _best friend_ and you _actually_ think I could do that!"

She swallowed. "I saw you do some pretty creepy things on the ship," she said carefully. "Like, you just walked up to several of those ninja-mercenary guys and _killed_ them for no reason. And then you just acted like nothing had happened and you were being all sweet and nice again." She looked really quite upset. "So, yeah, I don't know how or why, and it's totally not, like, _you_ , but..."

I couldn't even listen to her say that, I couldn't listen to _Sam_ saying that to me. I know I'd been doing things I couldn't understand and just a few minutes earlier I'd untied myself and taken out my rifle, but I could not accept _any part of me_ had any desire to ever make a video like that. There was just no way it was me.

...or was there? If what Sam was saying about what had been happening when I'd blacked out on the ship was true, there was some part of me that was capable of killing in cold blood. If I was capable of murder, that probably meant I was capable of making that video, didn't it? I couldn't really pretend otherwise. But, _God_ , when I thought about _me_ doing something like that…

I shouted, putting my hands up to my head. "This can't be happening," I said. "This just can't be happening…" I felt sick, actually sick, and I still couldn't breathe.

Bree had peaked in through the balcony door because of the noise I was making, and just having everyone _looking_ at me was too much. "Haven't you seen enough of me already?" I shouted at them, and then immediately regretted it.

Bree gasped and quickly closed the door. Min watched her scuttle away, and then turned back to me. "That's not fair," she said sternly. "It fucking sucks, but it's not our fault. We're on your side."

"The how come it was _your computer_ the video came from?" It was a stupid thing to say, but I felt like I couldn't prevent it from rolling off my tongue. Min or Bree wouldn't do it, would they? But then again, I'd trusted Amanda, too. Maybe everyone was part of some agenda to destroy me.

Min took a step toward me, and for just a second I felt intimidated by her. "What's more likely," she said, not backing down despite what she knew I was capable of. "That a friend who's helped you suddenly turns on you, or that an actual enemy who's threatened you found a way to access her computer?"

God, I didn't care about the answer to that. I didn't want to listen. It was all irrelevant. The video was out there, now, the damage was fucking _done_ already and now the entire planet was laughing at me or ogling me or doing God knows what to that _awful_ video. I couldn't walk out onto the street again without wondering if people had seen it and what they thought of me as a result.

This was too much. I wanted to _smash_ something. I wanted to _kill_ both Amanda and Natla. I almost didn't care about needing help with the spirits, I just wanted to blow both of them to pieces so all that was left was a river of blood and a sea of limbs like in Yamatai.

I'd backed against one of the walls and the bathroom was behind me. I staggered through the doorway and just shut myself inside it, turning to lean against the door. Footsteps followed me, but I didn't move.

I could hear breathing on the other side of the wood.

"Lara…" Sam say gently through the door. Unexpected tears welled in my eyes.

I just couldn't get those images out of my head, and every time I remembered them I felt so sick and so repulsed by my own skin. The shower was right there in front of me, so on impulse I stripped what I had left on and just got inside the cubicle. The water was way too hot but I just didn't care. I hardly felt like my body was part of me anymore, anyway. Who knew what it could do?

I couldn't deal with it. No part of me had any capacity left to even think about how we could solve this. I just _hated_ Natla and _hated_ Amanda and didn't understand why all of this needed to happen to _me._

I kept circling around those same thoughts and before long I was just standing there under the scalding hot water with my hair plastered against my face, crying my eyes out. None of this was real, except that it was.

By the time I was done, the ambient heat had dried my clothes and I scrubbed my pink skin dry and pulled them on. I had the towel over my head and was stiffly trying to towel-dry my hair without falling over when I heard someone slip into the bathroom.

I thought it was Sam, so I didn't say anything.

"Lara." That was _Min's_ voice. The surprise got my heart going again, but I didn't have any emotions left to react to it. I felt oddly disconnected from everything.

I pulled the towel off my head, anyway. "I thought you were Sam."

Min looked down at herself and then smiled wryly at me, shaking her head. I think she was trying to cheer me up, but it had no effect. She gave up. "If I _was_ Sam, I'd be shut in the second bedroom, crying about how terrible I feel for my girlfriend."

 _That_ made me realise I still did have some emotions left. My chest tightened; _Sam_. I didn't say anything, though, I just hung the towel back on the rack and leaned my weight on the sink. If I could just get over the feeling of being about to pass out, I'd go be with her.

Min was watching me. "This is insane," she said, and took a step towards me. "Give _me_ the spirits. I wrote the book on sleep deprivation. I'll be okay."

God, I _wished_ that were possible. Right now, especially. "It's not that simple."

Min looked determined. "You said you just touched them and they migrated to you."

"Yes, but then I 'just touched' some mercenary and killed him." I glanced up from the sink. "Natla knows how to transfer them, but she won't tell me unless _I_ do something for _her_."

She looked a little hesitant, but her jaw was still set. "Well," she said, holding her arms out to me. "We'll just have to figure out how to _not_ kill me by ourselves then, because you are a total mess and obviously you and Sam are the only two people who can stop Natla and Amanda."

I exhaled, and looked back down at the sink. It was a brave offer, but I didn't want to be responsible for her death on top of everything else.

She kept trying. "Come on, Lara. I'm no action hero. This might be the one chance I get to save the world," she was smiling at me. "Let me help."

It was lovely of her to offer. Both her and Bree had both been so kind to us and so generous… and I'd accused her of leaking to video. I winced. "I'm sorry about what I said to you before," I murmured.

"…But you're not going to try and help me take the spirits from you." When I didn't contradict her, she seemed disappointed, but she just nodded. "Please, just don't yell at Bree. She was torturing herself over telling Sam about the video. She completely idolises you, Lara. She still does, video or no video."

As if I didn't feel bad enough; I closed my eyes for a moment. How could _anyone_ idolise a person who made _that_ sort of video? Min was right, though, I _was_ a mess. "Okay," I just said, turning to face her. "I just need to _sleep_ finally. Maybe I'll be less of a train wreck in a few hours when Macca and Jammas arrive."

She stood aside so I could pass her, but stopped me with a hand on my arm as I did so. "Lara," she asked. "What did Natla want you to do as part of the bargain?"

There seemed to be no harm in telling her. They both knew so much already. "She wanted me to separate the Scion from the Slave Stone," I told her, and then shook my head. "I know Natla definitely wants the Scion, but I have no idea how the Slave Stone plays into any of this."

She squeezed my arm and then dropped her hand. She didn't say anything else, but she was clearly thinking about what she'd just heard.

Just as Min had mentioned, Sam was in the second bedroom. I gingerly opened the door and stepped inside. Our cases we beside the bed, and Sam was lying on her stomach with Diane's book spread across the duvet in front of her. She'd been crying all over it and looking like she could hardly see through her tears, but she was making an attempt to read it, anyway.

"Lara…" she said, sitting up a little. Her voice was wobbling and her whole face was red. She sniffed. "I know this is totally bad timing, but you don't have a Kleenex, do you?"

I laughed, despite everything. "I think there's some in my case," I said, very painfully bending down to have a look. I had to stick my hand in the front pocket, and that made my raw knuckles start bleeding and weeping again. I stood up, looking at them. Sam took the tissues from my hand and blew her nose.

"Sorry," she said, her voice distorted by a blocked nose. "I know the main issue here is that terrible video, but I don't know if I can have a serious conversation with you while I have snot dribbling down my chin." She caught sight of my knuckles. "Ouch!"

I examined the damage. "This is from beating up Amanda," I said. "So, not surprisingly, I don't really have a problem with it." My arm was bleeding again, too, probably from the hot shower. I didn't particularly care, but Sam looked a little concerned. I just pulled down my sleeve over my forearm so she couldn't see it and went to lie down beside her. I didn't like this top, anyway.

We just lay there for a minute or so. All I could think of was that blasted video and the millions of people probably watching it right at that second. I had my head down beside Diane's book, though, and after a little while I realised it was poking into my scalp. That reminded me of other more encompassing problems. "Natla," I said, and then exhaled. I was just too tired for any of this. "I know I should be _really_ worried about what her and Amanda are planning to do, but all I can think about is that video. I never want to leave the house again." I paused, remembering another detail. "Except that I don't have a house, either."

Sam was chewing her lip. "That's the point, though, isn't it?" I looked up at her. "Not that I would _ever_ hurt you, but if I wanted to really paralyse you, I'd do something like this."

I frowned at her, feeling increasingly uncomfortable with that idea the more I thought about it. I had just thought Natla was just getting a very calculated revenge after we ruined her reputation and destroyed Atlantis. It hadn't really occurred to me at all that she might be doing this for a specific purpose. Although, now that I considered it, this was _Natla_. Of course she was doing it strategically. She'd do whatever she thought she had to in order to get the results she wanted. I was sure that had something to do with world domination, but was Atlantis even recoverable?

There was a knock on the door. Sam said, "Come in!"

I peered over the top of my head to see Min lean inside. "Sorry to disturb you," she said, not stopping for us to respond as she walked up to the bed, phone in her hand. "I just had a thought. Sam, when Lara… _changes_ , does she still have the spirits on her?"

Sam thought for a moment. "I guess. She killed the guys with one of them."

Min looked quite excited. She held the phone at us, and I could see _all_ of the horror all over again. My heart started pounding; I couldn't look at it. "Sorry," Min said to me, and then spoke to Sam, "Look. The fact she even managed to film herself means something, right?"

Sam took the phone from her and pinch-spread the image to zoom in. "Yeah, but what's that?" she said, pointing to the phone. "I'm guessing there aren't many body doubles who would be happy to skewer themselves with rebars."

Min winced. "Maybe they have some hardcore CGI technology?" she suggested hopefully.

Sam handed Min's phone back to her. "If there's one thing I've learnt about magic, it's that I have no idea about it," she said. "If Lara can control the spirits when she's not herself, maybe she can dismiss them, too."

Min made a face at the phone. "Yeah, maybe." She then shook her head. "I keep feeling like we're missing something. Back to the drawing board, I suppose." She looked like she was dragging the slider on the screen as she left, and that could only mean one thing.

"Min?" I said. She stopped, looking down at me. "I know you'd really like to help, but can you please not watch that video anymore?" I just couldn't deal with the idea of _any_ of the people I liked and respected watching it for _any_ reason. If it wasn't bad enough imagining Reyes and Jonah and Sam's father… God, and Alisha had probably seen it, too…

Min glanced at the screen. "But how will we—" When she made eye contact with me, though, she abandoned that sentence. "Okay," she said. "I'll leave it." She closed the door behind her.

Sam watched her go. "I know you're really cut up about this video thing, but you should really try and get some sleep," she said. "We probably have to get out of here pretty quickly once the boys show up, so you should sleep while you can."

She was probably right, so I let her tuck me in and fuss over the cut in my arm. In the end, she bandaged it so it wouldn't stain the sheets. When she was done, she hopped into bed next to me and leaned up on an elbow, her hand on my stomach. If I closed my eyes, I could almost imagine we were back in England and none of this had happened at all.

I felt her lips on my cheek and that was alright – nice, even – but when she kissed me again it was slower and I couldn't help feeling like it was leading to something, even if it wasn't. I pulled away from her; I just felt so disgusting and I didn't want to be touched like that. Not by anyone, not even by Sam. "I can't, Sam," I said, realising I was teary. "I just can't. Not now."

"It's okay," she murmured in my ear, and put her head against my shoulder where she always did. That was comforting. She was right, I should _try_ and sleep. At least this time with Blanket around I didn't have to worry about doing _awful_ things I couldn't explain while I was unconscious.

I did try, too. I even think I actually got a couple of solid hours under my belt. However, every time I had been thinking about something peaceful and I suddenly remembered Natla or Amanda or that video, my heart would start pumping and I would get _really_ upset and _really_ angry and it would take ages for me to calm down again.

At one point I was imagining how Roth or my parents would have reacted to watching it and my eyes filled with tears again. They would have been _so_ disappointed in me. Roth, especially. He was really traditional about this kind of stuff.

"Hey," Sam said quietly from my shoulder. I'd been heaving breaths and woke her up. "Are you alright?"

What a question. "No," I said honestly. I felt a tear roll down over my jaw. "I _hate_ Natla and Amanda. I knew they were bad, I just… I just can't believe one woman would do that to another. It's just _so low_."

Sam's eyes were open. "Well," she reasoned, "I'm not sure you can really expect any sort of humanity from Natla, you know, not being human… And who knows what's going on with Amanda." She leaned up over me. "I've never thought of myself as particularly vengeful. I mean, the past is too late to change, right? But seriously." She wiped the tear from my cheek. "If I get a chance to kill either of them, I swear to God going to make it as painful as possible after what they did to you."

"Thanks," I said. "That would be one video I'd actually _want_ to watch."

She continued to stroke my cheek for a few seconds, and then rolled over and checked her phone. "Wow, it's seven," she said. "The boys will be here soon. Did you sleep much?"

I shrugged. "Yes. A little." I sat up, testing how I felt. My head was clearer and that was a relief, but my body… well. Don't even get me started on how _it_ felt. Just sitting up made me nearly faint, and everything just _ached_. Literally, I hadn't felt this bad since I was in hospital waiting for surgery on my infected stomach wound. A light breeze would have defeated me.

Sam watched me struggle. "Oh!" she said, remembering something. She swung off the bed and went rummaging through her case. "Bree and Min picked up some stuff for us, and— here it is!" She held up a small box, and to my immense relief, it read: _Panadeine Forte, rapid relief of strong pain_.

She popped a couple of the pills out of the tabs and handed them to me with her water bottle. I accepted them, swallowing them both and reaching painfully over to my phone. There was a message. I lay back down and held the phone over my head; my arms were shaking just from that. " _hey we knocked on your room and no answer. pretty quiet inside so guess you guys are out. we're too pov for a hotel lol but jammas' cousin has a boat shed off bruce hwy so we're gunna sleep in it. we drove here nonstop that's probably where we'll be. come whenever."_ Then next message was the address.

"Shit!" I said and put the phone on my chest, looking over at Sam. "They were here before but no one answered the door!"

Sam made a face. "That's right, Bree and Min are on the balcony trying to keep Blanket quiet."

I sat up again, wincing. I passed the phone to Sam so she could read the message and then tried to slowly stand up. It took quite some effort; I hoped the promise of rapid relief on the box of painkillers wasn't exaggerating. Sam volunteered to tie my boots up for me in the meantime.

I walked stiffly out into the main room and then opened the balcony door. Blanket, Min and Bree were sitting in a small circle. Min was playing with her phone, and the other two were on their 3DSes. When they looked up and saw me, all three of them looked a little scared for a moment. It was sobering.

"The boys tried our door but no one answered," I said, and then because of their expressions, added, "I'm not upset about it, but now we need to go find where they'd staying." I looked at Min. "May I borrow your car?"

Sam came up behind me and put her chin on my shoulder.

Min grabbed the balcony railing and pulled herself up. "Don't take this the wrong way," she said, "but I only have third party and _you_ are not right to drive and Sam's bad driving is practically legendary. I'll take you."

Bree was still frantically mashing buttons on her 3DS. "I'm coming, too," she said. "I want to meet them, and Blanket won't stop talking Macca."

That name made Blanket look up from her screen. "Macca's here?" she asked hopefully.

"We're going to see him now," I told her, and she looked delighted.

"Okay!" she said, and closed the screen and stood up, pushing past me and rushing over to the door. "Let's go!"

While Min was grabbing her car keys and I tried to sling my full backpack over my shoulder, Blanket leaned against the front door and announced, "I beat Bree _so_ many times!"

Bree huffed. "I'm out of practice," she said. "I haven't played for like two months since it came out."

Blanket laughed. "I still beat you!"

"Yeah, yeah," Bree said, ruffling Blanket's hair. "You're a pro."

"I'm going to beat Macca too," Blanket said, looking at Sam and I. "I have Malamar. He looks like a squid and a bird and he's psycho."

" _Psychic_ ," Bree corrected her. "It means he attacks you with his mind."

"I'm not a big fan of those sort of attacks, to be honest," I said, opening the door and letting her run out. I had to force everyone to walk really slowly with me down to the car, because I couldn't manage the steps with any sort of speed.

Blanket got to the car before us and was shouting from the car park, "Come on, hurry up!"

Min had her arm around Bree's shoulder and looked down at her. "You _sure_ you want lots of those?"

Bree looked insulted. "Are you kidding me? She's fucking hilarious. If you could knock me up right now I'd be up for it." She looked back over her shoulder at us. "Blanket taught me to do the _Hoedown Throwdown_ like an hour ago," she said as we walked into the car park. "You know? That dance thing from the Hannah Montana movie."

Blanket heard us as we walked up to her. "I'm going to be a dancer," she told us very seriously. "I already know almost all the dances ever."

It was so entertaining listening to the three of them that for a few minutes I completely forgot about the video, Natla, Amanda and the spirits. It was so depressing when I remembered what had happened.

As we pulled out onto the highway and I was examining Google maps for which way to turn, two heavily tinted black four wheel drives passed us.

Sam looked spooked. "Are those…"

"Yeah," I said. "Natla Technologies' cars."

Sam leaned back in her seat. "Well, at least we know where Amanda is getting her money, now."

Min looked at us in the rear vision mirror. "They probably don't expect the Nishimura heiress and her famous girlfriend to be driving around in the world's ugliest, oldest car."

There _was_ that, but I was still happy when Google Maps directed us out of town.

Bree had put the radio on a music channel, but after a few minutes the music stopped and a voice announced the evening news. She looked alarmed and was hurrying to turn it off before it could say anything about the video, but Sam stopped her and said, "Turn it up for a second."

Bree gave her a confused look, and then did as she was instructed. "…unearthed the body of billionaire mining magnate, Sean Frost. According to police reports, there is mounting evidence he was murdered prior to the flood at the Frost International mine in the Kimberley on Thursday. In a statement by Police, they have identified significant leads and are in the process of following them up. More on this at ten."

Sam and I looked at each other. That did _not_ sound good.

"Are you going to fly back there?" Bree wanted to know while we all had our necks craned out the window, looking for the turn off to Trinity Inlet.

I made a noise. "Can't fly with illegal firearms," I pointed out. "Which I'm finally about to have in my hands again. Also if Natla's men are on the highway then they will definitely be waiting for us at the airport. We'll start driving back quickly, though. Tonight, maybe."

Sam had been quiet for much of the trip. "I keep wondering if it's a mistake," she said. I turned away from the window to look at her. She had been filming us again after I'd said it was okay; it was a nice slice of normality in amongst all the chaos. "Well… the only reason you survived the fight with Amanda's bunyip-spirit thing was because of _your_ spirits," she said. "What if putting them back somewhere safe is actually making it harder for you to stop those two?"

I shrugged. "Then I'll do it the hard way, I suppose."

We'd turned off the sealed road and down a long driveway. Min turned the car lights on; it was getting dark. As we rounded a corner, the lights fell on a familiar shape. "Macca's car!" I said, forgetting I was sore so I could lean over Min and Bree to point at it. Blanket squealed.

"Guess we've found the right place, then," Min said, pulling up beside it.

There were no lights on inside the shed –which looked more like a small hangar from the outside, to be honest— and Blanket had rushed up to the door and was looking at a sign on it. Bree read it out for her. " _'Back in five – gone down to Trinity to catch some fish for dinner. Make yourselves at home'_." She tried the door; it was _open_. She rolled her eyes at us. "Are these guys _for real_?"

I read the sign for myself, and chuckled. "They are," I said, following her inside as Sam got some good footage of it. "You'll see for yourself in a minute."

Inside, it was dark and the whole place was full of all sorts of old furniture, fishing and boating equipment and all the other things men usually liked to have in their sheds. Sam's camera gave us enough light to look around, and she set to work combing the perimeter for a light switch.

"Hey, Min!" Bree called from the other side of the room, "Check this out! You can go up to the roof! What do you think, Blanket?" she was saying, "You want to go look to see if there's a good view down to the river? Maybe we can see Macca from up there."

"Yeah!" was Blanket's reply, and then I heard two sets of footsteps rush up the metal stairs. Min sighed. Slower, more measured steps followed them.

There was so much old rubbish in there, I couldn't help but look through it all. Fortunately I discovered my Satellite phone had a torch button, so I turned it on and began to explore some of the items in storage while we were waiting. I found a quiver and was getting really excited about maybe finding a bow to go with it when there was some commotion on the roof. Blanket shrieked my name, and I relaxed. They'd probably found Macca.

"I'll come up in a second, I promise!" I called back, not really fancying the idea of climbing all those stairs at the moment.

"Seriously, who the hell builds a shed and _doesn't_ put the light switch near the door?" Sam was asking, still picking along the walls. "Someone really needs their drafting qualifications checked."

I found… a broken badminton racket. I held it up, scowling at it for not being a bow. "Probably the same person who thinks that they'll ever get use out of broken sporting equipment again," I said, and threw it back in the box it came from. While I was picking through the other crates, I had a thought. I stood up. "God, you don't think Macca and Jammas have seen the video, do you?" Just the thought of having to look them in the face and _know_ what they'd seen... I put a hand on my churning stomach.

Sam made a noise. "You know how nice they are. They probably won't mention it." She changed her mind. "Okay, _Jammas_ might joke about it, but Macca won't say anything. Don't worry, though, I'll kill him if he does."

I was _so_ not ready to joke about it yet, or ever. I was frowning down at the box that I thought might contain the bow when I saw movement ahead of me. My heart started pounding. There was a giant frame leaning against the edge of one of the wrecked boats. It must be a mirror, I thought, and approached it.

Just as I had suspected, it was a mirror; I could see my reflection in it. Something seemed a little odd, though. Some of the boxes next to me didn't seem to be in the reflection; I supposed the mirror might be warped or the angle might be wrong. Dodgy old mirrors also sometimes had a ripple that distorted the reflection.

I stopped, though, feeling uneasy. The flash on my satellite phone wasn't as good as my iPhone and even from shining my phone at it, I couldn't really see enough detail to understand what was going on.

As I walked up to the frame and raised my fingers to the glass to feel if the surface was imperfect, Sam made a triumphant noise. "Ah hah!" she announced. "Found it!" The light switched on.

It took a few moments for my eyes to adjust, and when they did, I was face-to-face with my reflection. Something was wrong, though, and I only realised what it was when my hand went straight through the glass… because there was no glass. My reflection had her hand up in a perfect mirror image of me, though, and we touched fingers. Instead of cool glass, I felt warm skin.

While I was gaping at it, it _smiled._


	36. Chapter 36

"No…" It was like a nightmare.

I was staring at myself – every detail was exact, 'I' was even wearing my own clothes from back home – but it wasn't me. It was something else, and it was _sentient._

I pulled my hand away from where I thought the surface of the mirror would be, taking a step back. She copied me with the same knowing smile. That was when I saw what was in her other hand: a satellite phone. I'd just though it was a reflection of mine in the dark, but now the light was on I could see it wasn't even the same brand of phone. I recognised it, though, and my stomach _dropped_.

It was Macca's.

She was wearing my holsters, too, and they had Sean's pistols in them. And, God, Macca's car was outside… "What have you done with them?" I asked her, still _lost._

" _That_ 's your question?" She looked mildly amused. "Not, 'who are you?', 'what are you doing here?'" She extended a hand towards me with a falsely cheerful expression. "Hi, I'm Lara Croft," she said. "I'm _so_ pleased to meet you."

Sam had been behind one of the wrecked boats. "Are you talking to yourself again?" She was laughing, and I could hear her footsteps rounding the edge of one of the wrecked boats in front of me. When she appeared on the other side of it, she had her camera up and she was panning across the whole scene, looking at her LCD. "Because if you are I'm _totally_ going to get some footage of— _what the hell?_ " Her camera reached the 'mirror'.

I felt like my feet were cased in cement.

"In a manner of speaking, yes," the reflection said, "she _is_ talking to herself." She turned around and in one sharp movement drew a gun and fired a shot at Sam.

"No!" I _shrieked_ , not caring how sore or how tired I was, I just launched myself at her. She easily threw me off and I landed heavily on my side on the concrete floor. Something clattered across the ground toward me and I twisted frantically toward the boat. Sam wasn't hurt, she'd just backed up, terrified, against the hull of the wrecked boat. On the ground near me was a severed LCD panel. It was Sam's camera that had been shot, not Sam.

A boot stepped on the back of my neck, pressing my face against the cold concrete. I would have struggled, but I was acutely aware that she had loaded guns and one of them was probably pointing at my head.

"What _are_ you?" Sam was breathing, looking horrified. "Are you an evil doppelganger spirit or something and I'm not allowed to film you?"

The 'Doppelganger' laughed once, but ignored Sam's question as she focused her attention on me. "You have something that doesn't belong to you," she said in my voice, treading some of her weight against my jugular so my ears rang and I felt like I was going to pass out again. "I suggest you avoid a whole load of ugliness and just let me take it from you right now."

If she was after the artefacts, she was working for Amanda and Natla, as if _that_ wasn't obvious enough. Only _Natla_ would send a clone of myself after me. I hadn't done what she'd said, either. _Good_ , I thought. Go to hell where you belong, Natla.

" _She_ has something that doesn't belong to her?" Sam was saying, I think rather upset about her camera. " _She_ does? Why don't you give her face back first and then we'll talk about the Scion and the Slave Stone!"

"Sam…" I said. I couldn't get much air through my throat because of how heavy the boot was. I wasn't sure if Sam could hear me. "Sam, don't say anything…!"

When the Doppelganger spoke again, she'd obviously bent down a little because her voice came from closer to my ear. "Are you worried I'll shoot her if she annoys me, Lara?" she said. "I'm _you_ , and you're still worried I'll do it?" She laughed again. "That's very interesting. Put your arms out so I can take off your backpack."

I coughed. "You're nothing like me," I said, pinning my arms against my side. "If you were, you'd be helping me _defeat_ Natla and Amanda, not working for them."

When she spoke again, there was a smile in her voice. "Very well," she said, and I felt the cold steel of a the barrel of a pistol on the back of my neck. "We'll do this the hard way."

For a moment I could only hear the sound of my laboured breath. If the pistol was against my skin, she was bending down. _Now_ was my opportunity.

I twisted my head to the side so when she fired, it just connected with the concrete floor and sent chunks of it into my shoulder. Then, I bucked against her and toppled her backwards.

I stood over her while she recovered and managed to land one solid kick in her ribs before I spotted the second pistol some distance away from her on the floor. When I'd thrown her off, it had fallen out of her holster.

She saw me look at it and then at her. Instead of looking at all surprised or concerned, and instead of going for it, she just raised her gun and fired a couple of shots at me. I dropped out of the way of them, but _God_ I was still stiff and my wrist collapsed when I landed on it. The blood seeping through the bandage Sam had put on my arm reminded me of her.

"Go, Sam!" I yelled to her. "Go find out what happened to the others!"

I managed to reach the gun and crawl under one of the wrecks. The Doppelganger was out of my line of sight so she couldn't shoot me, but that made me worry about the others. I stepped out from behind the other side of the boat, gun ready, to find her before she could get to them.

I needn't have bothered though, because as I was edging along the boxes of broken rubbish, I felt the gun against my temple again. "If you're looking for the boys," she said, "then you're about two thousand miles off. Have you heard of the Boab Prison Tree...? Oh— silly me," she said, pretending to dramatically wince. "That's right. You don't know _anything_ about Aboriginal history."

God, I hoped those two were okay. I stepped out of another shot, using my shoulder to ram her up again the tin wall of the shed. Terrifyingly, it didn't even appear to wind her. She did have some blood on the t-shirt of mine she was wearing, though. I was excited about it until I realised it was mine, and that it was my shoulder that had been bleeding. I made a split-second assessment that I wasn't going to be disabled by that amount of blood loss, and then raised my gun and shot at her.

It went straight through the tin of the shed and then her pistol was against my temple again and she was beside me. That wasn't… that wasn't possible, was it? Maybe she _was_ a spirit, and like the Pigeon she could appear and disappear at will. Or maybe _I_ was just so slow from being tired that her moving as I usually did just _seemed_ supernaturally fast.

I had a really bad feeling about this. Still, she had _felt_ like flesh and blood when my fingertips had been touching hers before. If she was alive, then I could kill her.

There were voices from the roof, and I heard Bree screaming something to Sam, but I couldn't make out what she was saying. Min was frantically trying to quieten her down.

"How do you think this is going to end, Lara?" the Doppelganger asked me. She cocked the pistol and I heard the sound of it through my skull.

I could hear footsteps coming down the internal stairs, and Min yelled, " _Lara!"_

The Doppelganger ignored them. "Come on, stop for a moment and be honest with yourself. You're _exhausted_. You can't think properly and you certainly can't move properly. On the other hand, I am you, and I've never been in better condition."

I didn't want to listen to her. "Go!" I yelled at the others. "Get out of here!"

There were voices and footsteps and the sound of the big double-doors rattling. "It's locked!" That was Sam's voice.

"Find something to pry it open, then!" I called to her. "Anything, there must be _something_ in this place!"

While I was distracted, a fist drove _deep_ into my solar plexus and I doubled over, seeing stars. While I was writhing on the floor in a ball, trying desperately to draw a breath, I could feel the Doppelganger step over me. I heard more than felt the straps on my backpack being cut, and then the weight of it was gone.

I tried to recover as fast as I could, but the adrenaline had made my muscles shake and that, coupled with my difficulty in breathing and how weak I was, meant that I wasn't fast enough to grab it back from her. She lifted it easily out of my reach, and when I tried to trip her up she just stepped over my ankle.

I still had my gun though, and so I lined it up to shoot her. She kicked my wrist away. "You should have stayed home and slept," she said as she tied the two cut straps together and fit the backpack over her shoulders. When the others spoke, she did glance up to where they were standing, though.

"Here, you're stronger," Sam was saying. "Take it like this, and— yeah, try that."

"You'd think people would have learnt not to hang around you by now," the Doppelganger commented loudly enough for the others to hear and she tested the straps. Then, she started to walk towards where they were. "Shall I go warn them?"

 _That_ made me roll upward on my sore legs, struggling to rush after her.

She turned around sharply and I stopped in my tracks. I just had _no_ idea what she was going to do or what she was capable of. "You're not going to follow me," she said calmly. "I know everything about you. I know how you think, how you work, and I know how to stop you. You can't win."

"If you're me," I said, raising my gun at her, "then there's a chance I _can_ win."

She had a creepily neutral expression. "I am you," she said, "but with one major difference. I don't have _any_ of your mortal flaws."

I frowned at her. Her voice sounded like mine, but _that_ sounded like something that would come out of Natla's mouth. Why did she sound like Natla?

"Oh, come on," she said when it was clear I didn't understand. She tucked her hair behind her ears in a movement I often made, and then jutted out one of her hips. She very abruptly dropped the dispassionate demeanour and gave me a coy little smile. "Sam says I'm really photogenic," she said, pretending to be shy. "But what do _you_ think…?" She lifted the t-shirt to the middle of her stomach, showing some of her skin. Her expression asked me if I wanted to see more.

My jaw _dropped_. "It _wasn't_ me who filmed that!"

She didn't stop there, though, she grabbed her breasts and started breathing heavily, biting the corner of her lip. That was _it_. I had fucking _had it_ with this whole game. I didn't care what Natla or Amanda were doing or what for, but this was _not okay_. "Fuck you," I said through a very tight throat as I walked straight towards her with the gun raised. " _Just fuck you!"_

I squeezed the trigger, but even before I had completed the motion, she had already stepped aside with that knowing smile.

It was a few seconds before I really realised what had happened; Min and Bree were screaming and all I could _feel_ the Doppelganger smiling at me as she ran off somewhere. I didn't know why I wasn't following her, though, until I was finally able to process – almost in slow motion – what I was looking at.

"Lara…?" Sam had been behind The Doppelganger when I'd shot at her, and there was a mixture of shock and confusion on Sam's beautiful face that would haunt my dreams for the rest of my life.

She was clutching her stomach, and when she took her hands away for a moment to look at them, they were covered in blood.

* * *


	37. Chapter 37

Sam was staring at the blood on her hands like she couldn't believe it was there. "But I can't feel it!" she was saying, "I don't feel it at—oh, _God…_ " She staggered and fell against the tin wall. "But I'm going to faint…"

 _My_ vision was greying. "What have I… _Sam_!" I ran toward her automatically. Somewhere in the back of my mind I was aware of Bree _screaming_.

A figure stepped into my path and hands shoved me backwards and then quickly withdrew. " _No_!" That was Min's voice, and she sounded frantic. "She took Blanket, Blanket's gone, _don't touch her!"_

I braced myself against one of the wooden crates, staring at her for a second with my mouth open. Everything was happening so quickly, I couldn't think, I couldn't think, and _God_ I couldn't breathe again. Min pointed down to my arms and reflexively I looked at them: I could see the fish spirit on my wrists.

While I was gaping at it, Min went to help Sam. "For fuck's sake, Bree, _shut up_ for a second…" she was saying as she took Sam by the shoulders and helped her. "Sam, Sam… lie down. Lie on your back." As Sam leaned forwards, letting herself be lowered to the ground, blood dripped on the concrete.

Every fibre of my being wanted to run to her and wrap my arms around her and tell her everything was going to be okay. I'd survived a rebar with no medical treatment for nearly three days, right? All I'd needed to do was cauterize it when it started to bleed again.

I felt sick. If I'd had anything at all in my stomach, I'm quite sure I would have thrown up.

"Lara?" The tone of her voice... My stomach heaved. "Lara?"

"I'm here, Sam," I said anyway, barely able to move air through my throat, "I'm here."

Min pulled up Sam's t-shirt for a moment. Mercifully I couldn't see it from where I was standing. " _Fuck_ ," she said, involuntarily putting a hand over her mouth for a moment. "Fuck. Okay, okay. Sam, _no,_ don't look at it! Press here. And _fucking hell Bree stop wailing and call an ambulance!_ "

Bree was shaking so much she could barely take her phone out. I watched her do it, feeling disconnected and like I was watching all a horror story happening to four other people and not us. If _Bree_ was shaking, I can only imagine what state _I_ must have been in.

I shot Sam, I realised, but I could barely even identify with those words. I shot Sam. That blood on the floor around her, that was because of _my_ bullet, just like what I'd done to Larson. I remembered all his blood up my arms and on my knees and boots and just endlessly seeping out of him and oozing down the incline and now Sam was… "Sam?" my voice was so raspy. God, _I_ was going to faint. I couldn't, not now, I couldn't...

"Lara? Where are you? Where are you?" Sam was saying, and when she looked over towards me, her eyes were nearly rolling in their sockets. She reached a hand out to me and it flopped on the floor.

"We need to cauterise the wound," I said, watching Sam spread her own blood around on the floor as she tried to reach me. "Min, we need to cauterise it. Now!"

Min looked back over her shoulder at me. "What is this, the eighteen hundreds?" she asked me. "We just need to get her an ambulance!"

My heart was beating so quickly my chest hurt. "No!" I said, taking a few steps towards them. "Look, look at all that blood, _we need to cauterise it_!"

Bree had her mobile against her ear, holding it there with both hands. She sounded as dazed as I was. "Hello?" she said into the phone, "What? Oh... A-Ambulance, please."

"Just do what she says," Sam told Min. "Lara always does the right thing."

God, that... I'd just shot her. Was _that_ the right thing?

Min ignored both of us. "I'm not going to add severe burns to blood loss, Lara," Min said. "You're upset, you're not thinking straight. I wouldn't be, either. Just stand back."

"No," Sam said, reaching out to me. "Lara, don't stand back, please, come here..." My chest just _ached_ for her, and it was only when I tasted salt that I realised there were silent tears on my cheeks.

"She can't touch you," Min told Sam, pushing Sam's hand back by her side and then taking off her own hoodie and pressing it firmly against Sam's stomach with all her weight. "She wants to, but she has the spirits, remember?"

"Huh?" Sam asked, slurring her words. She sounded really confused. "I'm okay, I just need to get up," she was telling Min as she pushed weakly at her. "I need to get up."

Min pushed her back down again. "The ambulance will be here soon. Just lie down and relax, okay?"

The door was... the door was locked and the paramedics wouldn't be able to get in. _I_ could unlock it. That was something I could do.

I looked at the wooden crates. There had to be _something_ in one of these. I began to rummage through them for anything that bore even a slight resemblance to a crow-bar. There was absolutely nothing useful, though, there weren't axes or wood-splitters or even anything that was remotely sturdy enough. I kept searching and searching, frantically pulling items out of the boxes while my arms burned and my head spun. There was nothing, though, and when I reached the end of the row I was so _angry_ I just took one of the huge crates and _threw_ it against the wall, _shouting._ _No_ , I would _not_ let Sam die, trapped in here!

It split open, and the metal band popped off it. Still dazed, I picked it up and examined it.

I jogged back over to the door. Close by my feet, Min was still pressing on Sam's stomach.

"Yeah, she's still breathing," Bree was saying into the phone, as the operator gave her instructions. "My girlfriend is already doing that. I don't know... how do I–Oh, my God! Lara!" I looked over at her as I fit the metal bar in between the doors. "You're bleeding, too!"

I stared at her for a moment, and then craned my neck down toward my shoulder. I was, and I didn't care. "It's nothing," I said, and then turned my attention back to the door.

I felt a hand touch my boot, and I looked down. Sam's bloodied hand was gripping the instep. "Do something, Lara," she was saying. She was heaving breaths _really_ quickly and heavily. "I can't breathe…"

If it would have helped, I would have shot my own chest open and let her pick which organs she needed. I would have done it if it would have helped. "I'm trying, Sam," I said, _desperate_ to touch her. "I need to get the door open."

It was too much. It was _actually_ too much for me to handle. I shook. My hands were curled around the metal, and when I looked at them I remembered what I had been doing. Mustering what strength I had left, I used all of my weight to lean heavily on the bar. The adrenaline, exhaustion and panic had made me so weak, it took so many attempts but I just kept thrusting my body against it until something snapped and the door popped open.

I had been feeling marginally relieved, until I stood up.

I was face-to-face with a large group of those identical mercenaries, all with their guns up.

The rest felt like it was happening in slow motion.

"No," I breathed. My ears rang and I saw stars; I knew what the men were here for. "No, no... you have to let us get her to a hospital..."

Behind me, Bree had started crying again. "We're going to die," she told the operator. "They've come to kill us!"

The men filed past me inside, grabbed Bree who _shrieked_ and then lifted Min off Sam by her shoulders.

"Get the _fuck_ off me!" Min was yelling as she tried and failed to throw them off. "Can't you see she needs help?"

Someone was tying my hands, too, but then didn't finish. I was _not_ going to let them take us, especially not Sam. I wasn't going to stand there and be kidnapped.

One of them had taken Sean's gun already, so I rammed the one tying me up into the wall and wrenched his gun off him. Someone had hit me in the head, but I barely felt it despite the fact the blow had dulled my senses. Holding the gun up, I sprayed the whole lot of them with bullets. I took quite a number of them down and the floor was absolutely _awash_ with blood, but there just seemed to be _so many_. It wasn't very long before I ran out. I looked at the empty rifle for a second, and then took it by the barrel and swung it like a bat into someone's head.

They were like ants, though, they just _swarming_ in and eventually no matter what I threw or hit or kicked, they had me restrained with my face pressed against the cold concrete.

Across the floor, I could see one of them kneeling over Sam, a huge paramedics' toolkit next to him. He was putting an oxygen mask over her face. Then someone's boot connected with my jaw and I was out.

When I woke up, I could smell diesel and sea water. There was a loud motor and the vibrations were humming through my aching jaw as I tried to orient myself. I was lying face-first on the bottom of a speedboat. From how swollen my hands were, I guessed that they were tied very tightly. My legs were wrapped all the way to my waist with duct tape. I couldn't even turn over and even if I'd wanted to, I could see several pairs of ankles in leather boots around me.

It was silent except for the motor and Bree softly crying. No one was comforting her.

On the other side of the legs, someone else was lying on their back, completely still. I recognised her immediately. "Sam? God, _Sam?_ " Her eyes were shut, but they fluttered when I said her name. I can't tell you how much of a relief that simple movement was for me. "Sam? Look at me…"

She very slowly turned her head toward me, the oxygen mask still on. She sounded half asleep. "Lara…? Lara, I'm so _cold_."

She was tied up, too, with her hands clasped under her throat and tried to her neck. Also, there was loads of bandages around her waist, and they looked like they'd been expertly applied. There was still some blood seeping through them, though. Only bandages tied her ankles together. It didn't look very sturdy, maybe I could somehow get over there…

As I wriggled toward her, a boot trod firmly on my wounded shoulder. I gasped. "Don't move," a voice told me impassively, and then stepped off me. It was the best thing that could have happened; I felt the spirits shifting on my skin. I'd forgotten about them.

"Why are you doing this? We have to get her to a hospital!" I told the boot as it walked away. "Can't you see she needs help?" Infuriatingly, no one replied. It was like they had been told to ignore everything we said. "Hello? I said she needs _help_!"

"There's no point," Bree told me, sounding forlorn. "They don't listen. It's like they don't speak English, but I know they do."

I expected the next comment from the men to be, 'Watch your mouth' or something to that effect, but the mercenaries seemed wholly unaffected by _everything_ we were saying. I twisted my head to look up at them; they were silent, staring forward.

Even with how exhausted and injured I was, and even with poor Sam across from me and consuming all of my conscious thoughts, I knew that wasn't training. That was _magic._ "The Slave Stone," I said to myself.

Bree heard me. "Doesn't the Scion do that, too? When you use it?"

To be honest, Natla may have told me how the Scion worked, but I couldn't remember much of that encounter. Even the dreams I'd had during the whole Atlantis saga weren't that fresh in my mind, and now wasn't any sort of ideal time to be trying access them, either. The only thing I could really focus on was my Sam across the boat from me, watching me with a far too peaceful expression and an _enormous hole in her stomach_. God, I hoped they'd pumped her full of something from that paramedic kit. What was it though? Was it a painkiller? Antibiotics? Coagulants? Blood products? I was dimly aware Bree was talking to me, though, and she'd asked a question. "How do _you_ know how the Scion works?"

"We talked about it on the forums a lot," she said. "The three parts, the triumvirate, the trinity, all that. One for form, two for flesh, three for thought?" I wasn't following her, and my silence encouraged her to continue. "Well, you can create whole people with it and make them your slaves."

There was one part I did remember from Natla's monologue. "It takes three people to operate it, though. There's only Amanda and Natla." I tried to focus. "And the Scion plays some role in ruling Atantis and the world, too, but Natla never really told me much about that." While I watching Sam, I had a sudden, frightening memory of the skinless Sam replica that Natla had created when she'd had me bound on the throne. That had been _terrifying_. She'd done that by herself, hadn't she? Just one person? So maybe two people would give the _thing_ flesh? That only left 'three for thought'.

"I think you're right, Bree," I realised, thinking over what I'd seen. "They used the Scion, just the two of them. What if they didn't need a third for just creating people, though? What if there was another magical–"

From the corner of my eye, I saw rapid movement and then something solidly connected with my stomach. I groaned, trying to curl up into ball to protect myself. It kicked me three or four more times, and then stopped. "That's enough," a man's voice said.

It seemed they _did_ understand us, after all. They just obviously had their instructions on what they'd permit us to discuss. "I don't think they want us to talk about it," I said, coughing.

There wasn't much else _to_ discuss. Across from me, Sam smiled vaguely. "So," she said loosely. "How about this weather?"

I should have laughed, but all that joke did was make me cry. I couldn't _bear_ to see her like this, and it was all my fault. My Doppelganger was right: we should have stayed at home in England. I just should have _left_ Sam there… Although even that didn't seem like the right solution, because what if we'd been home when Amanda had paid us a visit looking for the Scion…? The Doppelganger was right about something else, at least. People _weren't_ safe around me. They got hurt and they got killed. _I_ hurt and killed them with my own hands _._ I shot my Sam, my beautiful, sweet, funny Sam. The love of my life, my family, my _world._ I allowed myself to get upset and I shot her, and now here she was, semi-conscious, smiling gently at me. God, the tears wouldn't stop.

Sam had been quietly watching me. "It's not your fault, Lara."

God, she knew me just so very well. "It is," I could barely speak, "it is, though. All of it is."

When we reached the ship, the boat was attached to winches and we were all heaved up out of the water and into a recess in the side of the hull for the shore runners. It was at that point that I saw there were several boats, and that Min and Blanket weren't in ours.

"Where's Min?" I asked Bree when she was pushed down on the floor of the boat beside me. "Is she with Blanket?"

Bree looked haunted. "I don't know," she said.

Sam, the men handled with some care, as if they were moving a fragile object. I was a different case; they threw _me_ around like a sack of potatoes. I didn't care at all how they were handling me until they started down the deck with me in a sling-carry. Sam was being taken somewhere else.

No, they couldn't separate us. They couldn't do this. Not now. " _Stop!"_ I shouted, struggling and trying to kick the men at my feet. "Stop, leave me with Sam!"

Despite how violently I was struggling, none of the men dropped me. They didn't try to engage with me at all, either, so I tried something else. "I'm going to stop Natla and Amanda!" I yelled at them, figuring it had worked on the boat. My voice was so hoarse it cracked. "Do you hear me? I'm going to _kill your bosses_!"

It was hopeless, and before long I was being carried down a familiar set of stairs into the cargo hold.

The men dropped me in a kneeling position, my legs all still bound and my arms tied behind my back.

In front of me, Natla was watching me with a triumphant smile from inside her tank, and Amanda was leaning on the railing.

Natla… just seeing her. I _burnt_ with how much I wanted to destroy her. Every hair on my head stood up and my muscles shook. Some of the fantasies the spirits had given me about Diane, I wanted to exact them on Natla. I wanted to launch at her and just tear her apart with my _bare hands._ Let _her_ blood be the blood that was all over the floor and all up my arms. I wanted the hole to be in _her_ stomach and I wanted her body to be up on the Internet for _everyone_ to consume.

"So," Natla began conversationally, disregarding the way I was looking at her. "I did hear on the way in that you were mentioning something about killing us?"

I closed my eyes and shook my head. I couldn't speak. I didn't want to speak. I had _nothing_ to say to this woman. I just wanted to _kill_ her.

She laughed shortly. "What, no comment on our glorious creation? I thought she was a work of art, myself." Natla was looking somewhere, and when I followed her line of sight, I saw my Doppelganger leaning against the doorway. It was impossible to read her; actually, Sam had often accused me of exactly the same thing. That reminded me of Sam and what had happened, and I flinched. Natla was enjoying it all far too much. "What?" she asked, seemingly innocent. "Don't like what you see? I can't imagine why not. She's _you_ , and she put an Oscar-winning performance on for the camera, didn't she? Did you like that, too?"

I refused to look at Natla. _Fuck you_ , I just thought repeatedly. For what you did to Sam and I, I hope you _burn_ for _eternity._

"And there's something beautifully poetic about using 'you' to defeat you, don't you think?"

Amanda abruptly interrupted her. "I think you need to get to the fucking point."

Natla shrugged. "You don't have to be here," she said easily to Amanda.

Amanda gave her a hard stare. "Good," she said flatly, and then just turned and walked out.

Natla watched her go, and then looked back down at me. "She doesn't like it when I play with my food," she said with a smile.

I managed to find some words. "Do I have to be here, too?"

She watched me thoughtfully, but she didn't respond to my question. "I'm disappointed," she said. "I had hoped you would do what I asked with the Stone. You see, you're far less attractive when you're sleep deprived, wounded and grief-stricken. It would have been my pleasure to help you remove the spirits."

"Then just do it," I said. "If it means that much to you."

Again, she ignored me. It was a moment before she spoke, and when she did, she was completely serious. "Where is it, Lara?"

I'd looked down at the knees of my trousers, stiff from sea-water and stained with dirt, blood and grease. I was still gazing at them when she asked me that question. I didn't know what she meant at all at first. She'd just been speaking about the Stone, but she'd asked me to get rid of the stone this morning and not seemed to care about what happened to it. The Scion was what she cared about, and that had been in my bag with the stone, which my Doppelganger had cut off me and taken.

But if she didn't know where it was, then… God, did I remove it when I was sleep walking at the hotel? I'd taken my rifle out of my bag, could I have taken the Scion out, as well? Or maybe Sam did something with it while I was in the shower…? The bags _had_ been beside our bed and Sam _had_ been going through Diane's book, so she'd clearly been thinking about the artefacts. Maybe she'd just taken it out to examine it and just not got around to putting it back? It could simply be in the hotel room.

But didn't Natla already know where we were staying? Isn't that the first place she'd look?

Natla had been watching me very closely. "You don't know. Interesting."

I didn't say anything, but suddenly, part of me was more hopeful. It wasn't game over yet.

"I would put money on that meddling girlfriend of yours somehow being involved," she said eventually. It was the first time I'd heard any sort of bitterness or malice in her voice since Atlantis. Hearing her even slightly unsettled made me feel _good_.

"She would never tell you," I said firmly. "Ever. No matter what you do to her, or me, or anyone."

Natla laughed. "Oh, I know that now," she said. "But I don't need her to tell me where it is." I must had looked surprised or confused or something of the sort, because she smiled broadly at me. "She's going to tell _you_ where it is."

Still awfully slow from lack of sleep and from just having Sam to worry about, I opened my mouth to tell Natla that _I_ would never tell her where it was, either. However, I closed it when I realised what she meant. There was far too much amusement and victory in her smile for this to be simply a case of ordering me around.

She wasn't planning on giving me the option to tell her or not. "You're going to force me to be your slave."

Natla shook her head gently. "No one's going to force you to do anything," she said. "Lara. Sam is dying. She's dying because _you_ shot her."

As if I wasn't _acutely_ aware of that. Even recognising that it was all set up didn't lessen the pain in the slightest, either. _I'd_ fallen for it, regardless of who had engineered it.

"We can pack her wound and give her shots and take the full range of temporary measures, but she needs surgery. She's not going to get that here on this ship, Lara. If she stays on this ship for much longer, she _will_ die. You will have to live with that for the rest of your life."

" _Stop_." It was the most I could manage. God, she just knew _exactly_ what to say. It was all _her_ doing and still she knew _exactly_ what to say. If I could have covered my ears, I would have. If my voice wasn't so hoarse, I would have shouted gibberish at the top of my lungs so I couldn't hear her. I couldn't do either.

And she didn't stop, of course she didn't. "I'm going to give you the opportunity to make things right. Think about it, Lara." Her voice was so pleasant and lyrical. "Sam only gets one chance to live. You have _many_ more opportunities to try and defeat me. You can do them with Sam, or without. That's your choice, and you're free to make it by yourself."

She paused for a moment, as if she was giving me the chance to say something else she could ignore. I didn't speak; there was no point. "So, Lara, here's the deal. _I_ will let you 'break free' and rescue the others. You can take Sam back to get the medical care she needs. That way it won't be the love of her life, the one person she trusts, who killed her." She let those words hang in the air. "All you have to do is put your hand on that beautiful stone, and while you're rescuing everyone you need to find out where the Scion is and bring it back to me. I may have some instructions for you afterwards, too, but they won't be too onerous, you have my word."

For a moment there, I considered it. I thought about the relief I would feel at seeing Sam lifted into an Ambulance and a team of qualified professionals working to stabilise her. When I'd got to the hospital in Japan and the doctor had stood over me and said, "Don't worry," with a smile, that feeling of knowing everything was going to be okay… I wanted that for Sam. I wanted her to feel that comfort and that relief and to know she was in the best hands.

But, God, what Natla was asking of me. She could do _anything_ with me if I touched that stone, anything. She could even completely disregard everything she'd just said she'd do. She just could not be trusted. "The problem is, Natla, your word means absolutely _nothing_."

She shrugged lightly. "You don't need to _trust_ me, just use your head. I need that Scion, Lara. You know that. And Sam won't tell you if she isn't one hundred per cent comfortable that you're you." She glanced across at the Doppelganger standing stock still in the doorway. "These things are useful but they have their limitations. I can't afford to take chances on this one."

God, I wanted to do it. I wanted to do it so very, very much. I must have opened my mouth _dozens_ of times over the next minute with 'okay' on the tip of my tongue, but I just couldn't say it. Sam would never want that. But then again, if Sam survived, over time she would probably forgive me. God… poor Sam. She must be in _so_ much pain.

In the end, Sam's voice won out. "No," I said to Natla. "I won't do it. I won't help you. If Sam's hidden it, _good_. I hope you spend decades, millennia looking for it and _never_ find it."

Natla's face didn't move at all. "Take her back to the other hold," she said, looking directly at me. She was speaking to the silent men behind me; I'd forgotten they were there. "Put her in the same tank at the wounded girl. Make sure the child is on the other side of the ship." As gloved hands hauled me up, they overextended my shoulder and opened the wound _again_.

Natla observed the whole process without even a shred of concern or anger. She wasn't worried at all. "Very well, Lara," she said calmly. "If that's your choice, so be it. You can watch Sam die, and you won't be able to hold her hand while she does." As I was dragged out of the cargo hold, she added, "Just let me know if you change your mind. My door is always open."


	38. Chapter 38

The 'flock' of men, flanked by my Doppelganger, herded me into the neighbouring cargo hold which had been emptied of coal but still had a musty, thick smell hanging in the air. There was no tank in this one. What there was, however, was a series of people down on the floor in the centre. As I was marched out onto the metal grid that overlayed the bottom of the hold, I saw Sam was in the middle of them. She was still wearing the oxygen mask, and two of the mercenaries were standing like statues holding half-empty blood bags that fed into drips near her collarbones.

My heart clenched in my chest just seeing her like that, but at least it meant she was still alive.

I couldn't relax for long, though, because when I was forced down on my knees a short distance nearby, the men clamped the bags and unfastened them, and then someone lifted Sam's head and removed the oxygen.

Then, casually, as if they weren't sentencing Sam to death, the men walked past me with the medical equipment and out the door I'd come in. I watched them go with my jaw open. They were just going to _leave_ her like that?

It was difficult to accept the depth of blackmail Natla was prepared to exact against me. "Monster," I said under my breath.

The only slave who made any semblance of listening was my Doppelganger. "This is your decision," she reminded me. "You give Natla the word and we'd be delighted to hook her straight up to all of that again."

"I can't really expect a manufactured person with the mind of sociopath to have a soul or a shred of humanity, can I?" I asked her as all the men left and she cut the tape on my legs and wrists. I was still wearing handcuffs, but without the tape, my hands regained feeling again. "At least that explains why you're perfect happy to do this…"

The Doppelganger laughed shortly. "I'm not the one who shot her, Lara. She's dying because of you, and she's still alive because of us."

My blood boiled at that, but since I wasn't completely restrained anymore, I didn't waste a second pushing away from her and struggling over to Sam.

"Don't forget about the spirits," my Doppelganger helpfully reminded me. There was a smile in her voice.

"Just get out," I told her, glancing over my shoulder. When she didn't, I shouted. " _Get out!"_

She smiled. It was very reminiscent of Natla. "No," she said simply. "Someone has to watch you and make sure you don't do anything stupid. And," she walked around us, standing on the other side of Sam so I couldn't ignore her, "let me remind you that if I completely dominate you when your hands are free and you have a gun, I don't need to tell you how attacking me would go now that you're handcuffed."

While I glared at her, she walked casually over to the walkway, vaulted up onto it, and sat and watched me. Her legs were dangling over the edge and merrily swinging backward and forward. I _hated_ her. I hated all of them.

"Lara…?" Sam was stirring at my feet and I knelt down as close as I dared to her. She turned her head slowly towards me, labouring to open her eyes. Her hands had been freed and one of them reached out in my approximate direction. The tips of her fingers were grey.

It broke my heart, but I had to move away from those fingers. "I can't touch you," I told her. "The spirits, remember?"

"Spirits?" she asked, no recognition registering in her voice. She frowned at me and then looked down her front. "What is… where am I?" She looked around us, and then back at her stomach. Her hands immediately went to the bandages. When she lifted her head up for a better view, her nostrils and lips were the same colour as the tips of her fingers. She was still breathing quickly.

Oh, God, she was _so_ _sick_. "It's okay," I lied. "We're prisoners on Amanda's ship, but we'll figure something out like we always do. Just relax."

She did as I said, but lay there for a good few seconds still looking confused. Her eyes were tracking in the air as she tried to think. It took her some time, but eventually she managed to orient herself. "That's right," she said eventually. "The Doppelganger-thing tricked you into shooting me."

I flinched and glanced up at my Doppelganger. She saluted me, and I had to look away before I _screamed._

Sam put her chin against her chest again and peered down at the bandages on her stomach. "Is it bad?"

"I haven't seen," I said, but so very clearly remembered Min's panicked reaction to it. "Does it hurt?"

She thought about that, too. "No," she said. "I mean, maybe? I don't really feel…" It took her a while to get a sentence together. In the end, she abandoned it anyway. "There's something wrong with the air in here," she told me eventually, instead. She took a few deep breaths.

Other than the faint mustiness, I wasn't having any trouble breathing. There was nothing wrong with the air. God, Sam needed that oxygen. It would have been so easy for me to just say it: to tell my Doppelganger than I'd do as Natla said. Sam could have her oxygen, the blood, anything she needed and I could take her somewhere safe where she could have surgery. It was such an easy solution, and yet, so completely not an option.

I squeezed my eyes shut for a second. I could think about that more in a minute. Right now I just wanted to comfort Sam while she was awake. Maybe if she was okay, I could tell her what Natla had said. She'd want to know.

Sam shifted uncomfortably on the ground while I watched her, clutching at her chest and taking another few deep breaths. "I really need a drink," she said, trying to wet her dry lips.

I almost had to laugh darkly at that. "I've heard that before."

She stared blankly at me for a second, and then gave me a bright smile for my attempt at humour… and, shit, that hurt more than her confusion. One of her hands rested on top of the bandages. "As if my liver wasn't ruined enough, right?"

"Your liver's on the other side, silly," I said. "It's still right to go."

"Well, that's a relief. All the pubs in London would go broke if something happened to it," she finished. She was smiling broadly— too broadly, as if she was reliving a really pleasant memory in all its glorious detail. "You know, on the way here I actually thought for a while I was passed out drunk again and you were carrying me back to the car."

Now that was a clear memory for me, too, and I stopped smiling. From behind the bar I'd watched Sam drinking with the pub's worse sleaze. I'd ducked out the back to get an extra bottle of vodka for mixers, and come back and she'd been more or less unconscious and he was nearly on top of her. I didn't tell her that, though. I also didn't tell her I'd broken two of his fingers, sprained his wrist and promised him more if he ever set foot in the Nine Bells again.

I had planned to tell her as a warning. But, on the way back to the car, Sam had just been silently laughing and smiling from ear-to-ear. When I lay her on the back seat of my terrible old Chevy, she'd rolled slowly onto her back and stretched. "You saved me!" she had said peacefully, and then fell asleep. I called in sick for the rest of my shift.

She was doing that same smile now, here, on the cold metal grate under the fluorescent lights. Only this time, she wasn't just drunk. Time wouldn't cure her, but she was comfortable anyway.

God. How could I even _think_ of telling her what Natla said? By some miracle she wasn't in pain. I couldn't voluntarily change that. What would be the point, anyway? There was no car to carry her back to this time. We didn't even have a home I could take her to. If I touched her, I'd kill her.

This wasn't Yamatai, and if I was waiting for someone to heroically rescue us the way I had Sam, it never happened.

I opened my mouth to reply to her, but no sound came out. Not straight away. "We'll be out of here soon," I managed to say. I didn't believe it.

Sam held her fingers up in front of her face, examining them, and then weakly propped herself up on her elbows and pushed at the dressings. She made a face, lying back down.

"Are you in pain?" I asked, inching closer to her. Surely as long as we weren't actually touching it would be okay…

"Yes." She looked up at me. There was such tragedy in her sunken eyes. "This would look _so_ great on film," she said. "But my camera is _ruined_."

God, _Sam_. My eyes brimmed with tears. Only Sam could be mourning her camera while she had a dirty great big hole in her stomach. "We'll give it a proper funeral when we get home," I promised. "You can film a tribute to it on a brand new one."

"Home…" she said. For a moment she looked lost again and clutched at her chest, beginning to sound uncomfortable. "Fuck, I'm so cold."

"We'll be warm soon," I told her, trying to sound upbeat. I didn't want her to think about any of this. I just wanted her to be comfortable while she… God, I wasn't going to actually let this happen, was I? I was deliriously tired and _so_ sore, but I was still alive. I was still alive, and that meant there was hope. I looked up at the area around us and my eyes fell on my Doppelganger. She gave me a little wave and then shook her head. I swallowed.

"Lara…" Sam began, there was a note of desperation in her voice. I looked back down at her. "Lara, I don't feel that good. I don't…" She put a hand over the wound, and I saw fresh blood seeping slowly through her dressings. It wasn't much, but compared to home much she had left... "Please," she said, reaching out to me. "I just want to feel you here. Lara, please…"

God, that _hurt_. Every single part of me wanted to be touching her. I wanted to hug her so hard that we'd merge into one person. "I can't, Sam," I could barely say. "I can't. If I touch you, I'll kill you."

"If you _don't_ touch me you'll kill me," she begged me. "Please, Lara, please, please… No one's looking. No one's looking at us. I don't want to die over here, alone."

"You're not alone," I said, and batted away a hand that was reaching out towards me. "Sam, please, don't do this," I said. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, but I can't touch you. We'll be home soon, just hold on…"

She gave up trying to reach me, watching me helplessly from the grate beside me. "Home," she murmured, thinking about it. After a moment, she smiled wistfully. "When I saw that beautiful old house, there was no way I wasn't going to buy it for you."

My lips parted, but I couldn't speak.

"It had no furniture when I inspected it for the first time, but as I was walking through it I was thinking… Lara can put her big old couch here. We'll have that ugly mask we both hate on that hook by the door. I could see all our stuff there, _us_ there. It just felt so right. I imagined coming home every day and you being hunched over your laptop with a big old book open next to you…" There were tears in her eyes. "And there was that cute little nursery with the view of cows and the horses. You know, just in case…"

"Don't Sam," I whispered. "Please don't."

She watched me. "I had another surprise for you," she said. "I'd been planning it since Atlantis. Maybe you'll find it by yourself."

"We'll find it together! We do everything together."

She shook her head faintly. "Promise me something," she said. I didn't want to say I would, because I didn't want to give her permission to leave me. She didn't wait for me to speak. "Bury me there, Lara. Under that beautiful old house. I don't care if it's ashes now. It's still everything that I always wanted for us."

I couldn't see through my own tears, and I couldn't wipe them away because my hands were cuffed. I couldn't touch or even look at the person I loved with all my heart in the moment that it really mattered. I just had to imagine her.

"We'll get a fire going when we get home," I told her quietly, comforted by that image. "And we'll put the beanbag in front of it. It'll be snowing outside."

She flopped onto her back on the grate. I thought I might be able to see a big smile across her cheeks. "All the Christmas specials will be on TV!" she said. "I _love_ Christmas. Let's get a _real_ tree. It fills the whole house with that wonderful pine smell. That smell means Christmas."

"After we've decorated it, I'll give you a big hug to make up for all the times I didn't," I promised her. "A proper one, so you can't even breathe."

She smiled, and for a moment her eyes were veiled. "I feel like you're hugging me like that now."

God…

"Close your eyes and imagine that," I said. "That we're at home in front of a great big open fire, and I'm giving you the biggest hug, and that's why you can't breathe."

She didn't do it straight away. She just watched me. "I love you," she said. "I'll always love you, Lara. It's okay."

 _It's okay_. That was the last thing Larson had said to me, too. It hadn't been okay then, and it wasn't okay now.

Her eyes were rolling a little in her head, and she was breathing quickly again, and I had an _awful_ moment when I remembered the last time I'd seen her chest rise and fall like that. I'd had her legs over my shoulders my lips against her skin, and she'd been whispering my name.

"Lara…?"

My tears spilt down my cheeks. "It's okay, Sam," I said, echoing her. "It's okay. We'll be out of here soon."

"I know," she murmured. "I trust you."

She didn't say much after that; she fidgeted uncomfortably, mumbled something, called for me…

I lay down on the floor beside her, and just cried and cried so much there were just no tears left anywhere in me. There was no _feeling_ left anywhere in me. This wasn't real. _I_ wasn't real. I wasn't real and I wasn't watching the life ebb out of the person I was desperately in love with. I couldn't even touch her.

I was _so_ tired and _so_ sore. My chest literally ached; perhaps I was having a heart attack. I closed my eyes; I hoped I was. I wanted to die here, with her. I never wanted to do a single thing without her.

"Are you really going to do it?"

My eyes flew open. That was Amanda's voice, and it snapped me out of the surrender I'd been feeling. I grit my teeth. "Leave me alone," I said tiredly. "You've done enough. Just let us die in peace."

I could hear footsteps ringing on the grate as she walked around us. When she stepped into my line of sight, she looked down at us both. Both her eyes were black and she had a huge split along her cheekbone. I'd done that, I realised. "You look pretty alive to me," she said and the nudged Sam with her foot. "She could use more blood, though. A lot more."

"Don't touch her," I warned Amanda. I was in no condition to fight, but it hardly mattered because it didn't look like she was going to try. Even though the last time I'd crossed paths with her I'd beat her quite badly, she was making no attempt on me while I was lying on my back, restrained. That seemed important. If I'd had any energy left, I'd have kicked her away anyway. I didn't want _anyone_ near Sam. "Did you come here to enjoy the show, or to convince me to take Natla's deal?"

She crossed her arms. "Natla thinks there's an off-chance you might actually learn how to use those spirits on you and escape," she said, nodding down at my torso. "I told her the _wondjina_ are different to my spirits, but she didn't fucking listen. Even _she_ acts like she thinks Aboriginal culture and spirituality is this one homogenous system, it's fucked up. So here I am." She presented herself with an ironic sweep of her arms.

"I bet you're really enjoying this," I said bitterly.

She didn't look like she was enjoying it. Then again, she never looked like she was enjoying _anything_. "Of course I'm not," she said, dropping her arms again. "I fucking hate you and you've caused me a huge amount of drama, but I'm not a _psychopath_."

Drama? _I'd_ caused _her_ drama? Gesturing at Sam, I said, "Maybe you can film the point where she actually dies and put that on YouTube, too."

I expected her to get angry at me, but she didn't. She just watched me, looking really unsettled. She didn't say anything at all. I hated her for it. I _wanted_ to fight with her, but as satisfying as that would be…

I looked across the grate at Sam. She was pale, but she still looked so beautiful. I ached for her, to hold onto her, and since Amanda was here… I wouldn't forgive myself if I didn't at least _try_ and explore every possibility. Even some things I'd rather not. My jaw tightened as I looked back up at Amanda. "Then help me get her out," I said, awkwardly sitting up. "To safety, to a hospital."

Amanda closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, she was looking up towards my Doppelganger. The creature waved at us. "You know I can't do that."

"Please, Amanda. Please, this is _Sam_. She hasn't done anything to you. I'll come back, you know I'll—"

"—Lara, I can't," Amanda interrupted me, enunciating every consonant. She raised her eyebrows at me.

"You can, you mean, but you _won't_!"

"What's the fucking difference, they end up in the same result anyway!" she said, the volume rising. "Just stop, okay? Stop!"

I stared at her for a second. This was _getting_ to her? Why on earth…? Not that it mattered why, I supposed, as long as it worked. I took a breath. "When your father died, Amanda," I began, hoping I could convince her. "I spent ages trying everything to try and keep him alive. If there had been even a small chance he'd have lived if I'd gotten him to a hospital, then I'd have—"

She didn't let me get to that point. "Shut up! Shut up!" she yelled down at me, putting her hands over her ears for a second. "For fuck's sake, Lara! I get it! You love her and she's dying! I get it, okay? But there's fucking nothing I can do about it so can you stop torturing me?" She was breathing almost as heavily as Sam was. "You shouldn't have interfered," she told me more quietly. "You should have stayed the fuck home in England in that big old house she was talking about and just lived happily ever after."

"You burnt our lovely house down," I reminded her. "And kidnapped a small child, and partnered up with Natla. I can't just let that happen."

"And yet you're just lying there waiting for you both to die and telling me to go away." I opened my mouth to rebut her, but I didn't know what to say to that. It was true. When I didn't speak, she just shook her head. "You don't even know what you're trying to stand in the way of, anyway."

Not _that_ old hat. "You'll be the _saviour_ of mankind, right? By overthrowing global regimes and recreating some some ancient utopia? Don't bother, Natla's already given me _that_ lecture."

Her jaw was set as she looked down at me. She didn't respond straight away. "I researched your pigeon," she said. I was so surprised by the sudden topic change that I let her speak. "Do you know the story of Jandamarra?" I'd heard that name before, but I couldn't remember the details. "He was a Bunuba man who fought the longest running civil war against the white invaders that Australia has ever seen. Do you know how he did it? How he was so successful?" I didn't, of course, but she left a pause for effect. "He joined the Settler police. He worked for them. He learnt all their ways and then finally he stole their guns and killed them all. He secured the Kimberley for his people for a really long time. His nickname was 'Pigeon'."

That story left a bad taste in my mouth. "So what are you trying to tell me?" I asked her. "That I should take Natla's deal and work for her? Sam would never want me to do that!"

Amanda had calmed back down again. "You know what Natla's like," she said. "She'll just keep taking things away from you until there's nothing left. She does it to _everyone_. _Everyone_! You're not winning anything by choosing to lose Sam now. She'll keep finding ways to get at you, anyway. No matter what you think."

I looked back at Sam just to check she was still breathing. For one terrifying moment I couldn't see her chest move… then I saw her swallow. I released the breath I'd been holding. "I don't care what else she holds against me," I said. "I don't care about anything. I only want Sam."

When I looked back at Amanda, she actually looked surprised. It quickly morphed into disgust, however. "I thought you were all about _saving the world_. Turns out you're a hypocrite. You only want to save one person."

That _hurt,_ and I couldn't stop myself from turning it back on her."That's rich coming from you. All it apparently took was your father's death and you're buddying up with the woman who conspired to destroy him. You know what he told me, Amanda? That he _wished_ he had a daughter to be proud of. If only he knew…"

She _seethed_. "You know what?" she said, holding up her hands in a 'yield' motion. "I'd tell you to go fuck yourself, but I've seen enough of that for a lifetime." She gestured at Sam. "There. _You_ got worked up about some crap that doesn't even fucking matter and _you_ hurt her. You killed her. I don't even fucking care what Natla wants me to do, she's wrong. No one ever listens to me, no one! Fuck her, and fuck you."

When she turned to walk out, I realised with a horribly sinking feeling that I'd gone too far. I couldn't save Sam by myself. "Amanda, wait!" I called after her, panicking. " _Wait_!" The door locked behind her, and I tried to stand on shaking legs to run over to it. My muscles were quivering so much my knees kept locking, but I made it to the door anyway and yelled for her through it. I would have hammered on it if my hands were free. She didn't come back.

I spun around, my heart sinking. Amanda might have been my best chance to save Sam. She actually sounded like she wanted to, and then I blew it, I thought. Shit! This can't be it. This _can't_ be it for Sam, it can't be. I thought about Roth… He'd just died so quickly. All of them had. How easily someone I cared about could just disappear forever.

God, not Sam, though? Surely, not Sam? Could the universe be _that_ cruel?

I walked back over to her. The way I was standing cast a shadow over her face, and some part of her realised that. "All that yelling," she mumbled.

"Not at you," I said gently. "Just go back to sleep."

When she opened her eyes, I could see she was there with me. Completely, if only for a moment. "Lara, give me the spirits," she told me. "It doesn't matter. I'm dying. I want to go like Grim and Roth and Alex. I want to go knowing I'm helping you do something _amazing_. Give them to me and then finish off Natla."

I looked down at her, burning with how much I wanted to scoop her up and hug her close. No one should ever have to say the things she was saying without being loved and cherished and comforted in the arms of the person who adored them. Natla was right about one thing; she was dying without holding the hand of the person who loved her. The person who would cry for her, and the person whose broken heart would _ache_ from the loss of her.

Sam was so tiny, so pale and just _so_ sick. And yet, she was still _everything_ to me. I'd lost _so_ many people, so many. I'd cried for weeks, months, years over them. There was no more space in me for loss, not of anyone.

And not of Sam. Not this time. I wasn't going to bury her beneath the ashes of our beautiful house, not yet. Not for many, many years.

I could barely speak. I was about to do exactly what she I knew she wouldn't want me to do. "I'm sorry," I whispered to her. "I'm sorry. I know you said you trust me and I know you'd probably rather die, but I hope you'll forgive me. At least you'll be alive to."

She was already struggling to stay conscious, and I'm not even sure she heard me at that point. I hoped for her sake she didn't.

I looked up at my Doppelganger who was listening very intently. "Tell Natla I'll do it," I said, and then threw up.


	39. Chapter 39

My Doppelganger wouldn't let me stay with Sam, and that alone almost changed my mind. I stood over her for a moment before I was led away. She was mumbling and making random movements like she trapped in a nightmare; in a way, she was. Sam, I thought. _Sam_. What have I done? What am I _doing?_ God, my heart _ached_ and my head felt like it was stuffed full of cottonwool. I couldn't think clearly at all. I just wanted Sam to be okay.

"The faster your hand is on that stone, the faster she gets the care she needs," the creature reminded me, and then took a two way radio from the back of her belt and spoke into it.

Moments later, the men who had originally escorted us flooded into the chamber again. Big hands in thick leather gloves taped me all up. Natla and Amanda clearly weren't interested in giving me any possible opportunity to escape. As if I would, anyway; I couldn't help Sam that way so there was no point in trying.

They were both waiting for me in Natla's cargo hold when I was carried back down there. Amanda wouldn't make eye-contact with me, though, and Natla found it very entertaining. "Oh, I'm going to enjoy eternity with you two," she said, reclining casually against the glass near where Amanda was standing. She spent a few seconds appreciating the strain between us and then turned her attention back to me. "So, if we're done playing a little Good Cop Bad Cop, shall we get things moving? Amanda?"

Amanda was wearing one of the thick leather gloves the mercenaries had on, and on her slender hands it was comically huge. In the palm of it was the Slave Stone; I could _feel_ it even before I could see it.

My heart pounded. _Shit_. Was I really going to do this?

I couldn't look away from that glove as Amanda travelled the length of the walkway, down the stairs and onto the floor grate where I was kneeling. It was either this or lose Sam, I thought. This is for her, it's for Sam. I'll figure something out once she's safe.

It was all happening so fast, though. As I felt the stone draw closer to me and the spirits all flee to the far side of my body, I panicked and tried to pull away from the men. "How do I know you won't just kill Sam anyway?"

Natla and Amanda shared a look. Amanda rolled her eyes as she disappeared behind me. "Dead people don't generally confide to their girlfriends where they've hidden magical objects." I could _feel_ how close the stone was as she spoke to the men. "Hold her. Tightly."

Ten pairs of gloves latched on to every possible part of me. As Amanda tried to get a safe angle for my hands, I make the mistake of glancing up at Natla.

The look on her face… She was leaning against the front of the tank so she could catch every detail of what was happening. I might as well have been kneeling between her legs instead of far below her at ground level. If I hadn't already just thrown up, I may have then. She was sickening. How could _anyone_ enjoy doing this to another person?

As soon as the stone connected with my hand, though, all of that disappeared. It opened in my palm and the familiar vortex began churning inside me, sucking me down into its beautiful depths.

Unlike back at the mine, I didn't fight it. I let it spiral inside me, leading me into that thick, black nothingness. When I opened my eyes, I wasn't looking into anything. It was as if I was profoundly blind and no matter how I looked there was no source of light.

Amanda's voice, I could hear, though. "Listen to me, Lara. Listen to me." I think she only said it once, but it reverberated to every corner of my brain, whispering and repeating itself. I knew what came next, so I wasn't surprised.

It was as if I had stepped away from myself and was watching everything happen to me. There was nothing on my face, nothing. I was completely blank and completely unresponsive and kneeling, seemingly broken, on the metal grate. My top was all cut up and I could see some of the angry scabs on my shoulder. "I'm listening," I watched myself say impassively. It was so free of emotion that it almost sounded robotic.

When Amanda pulled the stone away from my palm I snapped back into myself like a rubberband. I was looking down at my knees and the disconnect was palpable: I felt like I was me inside someone else's body.

It was a relief I was still _me_ though. Some relief, anyway.

"Take all this crap off her," Amanda was saying to the men and in less than a minute I was completely unrestrained. None of the men were touching the guns around their neck and they were all close to me, too close to get a good shot. So was Amanda. If only I could have done something about it. But, Sam. The longer I made this process, the longer it would be before Sam got the help she desperately needed. I wasn't even sure what being a slave meant. _Could_ I even hurt Amanda if I decided to?

"Stand up," Amanda said, and, as if I had no access to the part of my brain that controlled my movement, I did. Experimentally, I looked down at my torso and held my hand out to see if I could move it voluntarily; I could. It was all so odd. My legs were still shaking though. Being enslaved didn't fix my exhaustion.

Amanda walked around to stand in front of me, looking me directly in the eyes. This close to her face, I could clearly see all the bruising from when I'd punched her. That split on her cheek looked _really_ angry; she'd taped it closed with adhesive sutures but hadn't done that good a job of it.

"Would you mind…?" Natla said from above her. Amanda glanced back at her, still intent on me. She spent a few more seconds fascinated by me, and then scowled and headed back up towards Natla. I watched her approach the tank purposefully and reach out a hand to the glass. Then, she took a steady breath and closed her eyes.

Not a fraction of a second later, the tank _exploded,_ showering the cargo hold with pebble-like fragments of safety glass. I put my hand up to shield my face as they came raining down around where I was standing.

When I looked up again, Natla was standing on the platform where the tank had been, stretching her wings. She was free.

Demonstrating this, she stepped very easily over the edge and her wings caught the air and delivered her to the ground I was standing on. Then, they disappeared.

She walked the rest of the distance to me. Or rather, she _sauntered,_ looking me hungrily up and down. "Oh, this is good," she said. She was turning on the charm again, and fortunately I was far too tired and too worried about Sam for it to have any effect. She did a slow circle of me while I stood there, unmoving.

She didn't complete it though, and when I felt breath on my neck I realised why. Having her that close to my delicate skin set my hair on end. "I'm going to enjoy being your master," she said right beside my ear . Once upon a time, that would have been such sweet torment. Now, it just made me want to _kill_ her _._ "You know what the best part is? No?" I wasn't sure if I could speak, but even if I could have, I didn't want to say anything to her. "For everything I'll make you do, you're still in there, Lara," she said from the bottom of her throat. "You're still in there, but you'll doing exactly as I say."

You do anything of _that_ sort to me, I thought, and I will _tear you limb from limb_ the second I get the chance.

"Natla," Amanda warned her. "We agreed on this: _I'm_ her master."

"Well." Natla finally completed the circle, standing beside Amanda. Amanda was tall and blonde as well, but she had nothing on Natla. The two women could otherwise not have looked more different. Natla smiled across at Amanda. "Maybe you'll enjoy having Lara as your personal toy, too," she commented, and then feigned surprise. "Wait, weren't you fifteen when you 'drowned'? I'd hazard a guess that you don't even know what you're missing out on."

Amanda shot her a tired look. "I can't be bothered with your stupid mind games," she said flatly, and then looked back at me. "Listen to me, Lara: _Just_ for getting the Scion, Natla is going to be in control of you. Listen to her instructions, but only where they relate to finding and retrieving the Scion."

Natla took a step forward, leaning on her hip. "I'm better at people than Amanda, you see," she explained as if she was divulging juicy gossip. That was no news to me.

"Listen to me, Lara," Natla said, finally getting sick of teasing us for now. "You are going to pretend you have escaped. You will then rescue Briana and Min from the last cargo hold using the key Amanda is about to give you. Samantha and the child will be waiting for you in the helicopter and you will fly it off the ship and land on shore. You have two tasks: convince the others everything is fine, and help Samantha recover enough to tell you where the Scion is hidden so you can immediately retrieve it and bring it to me. Samantha won't tell you if she thinks you are enslaved. She _must_ not suspect, not under any circumstance. You know her: make sure that doesn't happen." After each of her sentences I kept waiting for the clincher, and eventually it came as I knew it would. This was Natla, after all. "Kill anyone else who guesses you're enslaved. No exceptions. You _must_ find the Scion."

Amanda walked up to me and placed something into my palm. I looked down at it, it was a keycard.

Natla continued. "The men guarding the girls have been instructed to appear to fight but to let you win. The key is in the helicopter ignition. Do you understand my instructions?"

"Yes," I said, at the same time as I nodded involuntarily.

"Then go," Natla said. "We will continue this conversation when you return with the Scion."

My body spun on its heels, completely ignoring my fatigue. I jogged past the group of silent mercenaries and my impassive Doppelganger who watched me closely as I passed.

As I was leaving, I heard Natla say to someone, "Follow her. Make sure she succeeds." I didn't need to guess who that instruction was for.

I should have been far too tired to run up the stairs, but I did so, anyway. My muscles _burnt_ and I could hardly breathe when I made it to the top, but I kept jogging along the deck until I reached the last cargo hold. With a change of wind blowing my hair all over my face, I held the key in front of a reader and the door and let myself down the internal stairs. I kept expecting at any moment that my knees would give and I'd fall the rest of the distance. Somehow they managed not to.

There were two men at the door near the bottom of the cargo hold. When I opened the door they both shouted, but easily went down with a few well-placed punches, none of which I had any say in. My knuckles were still aching from when I'd beaten up Amanda, and as each blow had connected my joints _ached._ I shook out my hands as I stepped over the bodies of the mercenaries.

There were two figures spooning in the centre of the floor; only Bree looked up as I entered. Her face _lit up_. "Lara!" she shrieked, sitting up. "You escaped!"

Nothing could be further from the truth, I thought, but obviously couldn't say. I gestured for her to follow me. "Come on! Let's go!"

Bree put a hand on Min, who hadn't moved much. "Lara's here!"

"I'm not deaf," Min said to her, very slowly and painfully sitting up with her assistance. "Yet."

"Oh, my God!" Bree was saying to me as she helped Min up. "I can't believe it! You're _amazing!_ How did you even do it with all these guys everywhere! _"_ When she saw I didn't look as cheerful as she was, she swallowed. "Is-Is Sam…"

I nodded. "Yes, she's alive," I said, hoping that was still the case. "Come on, let's get out of here!"

I wasn't paying much attention to her, though, because Min was clearly in bad shape. She had a mottled bruise across her jaw and there was blood at the corner of her mouth. That wouldn't be what was causing her such difficulty, though. As Bree got her upright, her head was spinning and she nearly fell over again. "Whoa," she said, bracing herself on her tiny girlfriend. "I am _not_ right to drive."

"What happened to you?" I asked, holding the door open for them as they passed me.

"I met your former employer," Min said over her shoulder. "She had some questions for me about my time at Frost International. When it was clear I had _no_ idea what she was going on about, she just told the men to throw me back in here." She paused. "They interpreted 'throw' literally."

I was, of course, concerned for Min's wellbeing, but the questions about Frost International? _That_ was interesting. I opened my mouth to ask Min what Natla had wanted to know, but no sound came out. I tried a couple more times, but, literally, my mouth wouldn't form the words. I supposed that must be something Natla didn't want me to know. The fact that Natla didn't want me to know any more about it made it even more interesting.

When I didn't speak, Min continued anyway. "I don't think Diane and Natla used to be friends. Actually, I think maybe the opposite." The two of them let me run ahead when we reached the top of the stairs. I did, thinking about what Min had said.

Judging by the date on the letter, Diane and Natla had been in contact five years ago. It seemed like that hadn't continued, though, because I hadn't found any evidence of Diane Frost on Natla's iPad when I'd stolen it in Peru. So they _had_ been in contact, but it had stopped for some reason. Natla had lost interest; that didn't sound like Natla. Not at all.

It seemed like Amanda was wrong, after all: Natla didn't destroy the lives of _everyone_ she came across. Larson, yes. Amanda, Pierre, yes and yes. She was making a very definitive attempt on Sam and I, and now, it seemed, Bree, Min and Blanket.

But not Diane. Diane, she eventually left alone. Why was that?

I couldn't think further on it, though, because we reached the helicopter. Just as Natla had said it would be, it was ready to launch.

When I rushed up to it, Sam was lying supine on the floor of the cabin. Someone had rigged three different bags of various sizes up to the drips near her collarbone, and she had the oxygen mask back on. Her dressings had been changed, too. She looked comfortable.

Beside her, Blanket was to all appearances sleeping, bundled up in a light sheet and cuddling her 3DS. I should have worried much more about her welfare, but all I could think was: _Yes_ , I can _touch Sam_!

While Bree was helping Min inside the cabin, I reached out and took Sam's hand. "Sam…"

"Lara?" she said groggily, and squeezed my hand. "It's you." She looked around her at the inside of the helicopter, and as she realised where she was, a gentle smile grew across her cheeks. "You did it."

My heart nearly stopped. For a second I thought she might have known what I _really_ did, and I could hear Natla's instructions about how to deal with people who figured it out echoing in my head. When I thought about it, though, it was clear to me she was happy about being rescued.

Well, I was happy about it, too. I kissed her hand and rested it against my cheek for a moment. God, it was _so good_ to be able to touch her. I just wanted to crawl into bed with her and sleep for a week, wrapped up in her arms. I released a breath at length. It will all be worth it if you live, I thought.

I knew I had to leave quickly for it to be a realistic escape, and as much as I just wanted just to hold her forever, I couldn't. Not now. I kissed her hand one more time, and then closed the cabin door behind Min and Bree and swung into the cockpit.

The panel in front of me was very familiar; it was the same make of helicopter as the one I'd stolen from Natla in Peru. That, at least, was reassuring. I turned the ignition and listened to the rotor power up. I had thought I would have real difficulty remembering what to do, but in the end, I didn't have to worry. My body clearly remembered the movements I needed to make, and coordinated a lot of the details without my input. The only difference between Australia and Peru was just how windy it was out.

Once I was in the air, it was easy to see why: storm clouds were gathering. I sighed at them. "Really?" I asked the universe; couldn't it come up with some _other_ way to inconvenience me for once?

Fortunately, we made landfall quite quickly; I had far less distance to travel than I had in Peru. Just as I was trying to figure out how to use the navigation system so I could get us to a hospital, the whole sky around the helicopter lit up. Not a second later, a deep, rib-shaking rumble shook the whole craft. Fat droplets of rain splattered on the cockpit windshield.

I craned my neck to look down at the ground below. There was maybe _a_ house down there in amongst the thickly growing eucalypts. What I was really looking for was a town big enough for a hospital that could take care of Sam. I could probably keep flying for a few minutes longer if I—

Another flash lit up the sky, momentarily blinding me.

As if it wasn't obvious enough, the 'WARNING' light lit up on the dashboard. Frustrated, I disabled it. "Okay, okay, I get it," I muttered. I did notice that when the warning light had come on, a red light above my head lit up. I glanced up at it while I was circling to find somewhere to land; it was on a comms unit.

Well, we couldn't be too far from Cairns, could we? I could use that comms radio to get them to call us ambulances. They could probably race up that highway I could see below us without much regard for the weather. Rather than put Sam's life even further at risk by flying through a storm, I landed the helicopter in a clearing near a big dam.

It was some distance away from the house, but it would have to do. I turned off the engine and went straight back into the cabin to check on Sam while Min and Bree climbed out.

She was drowsy but conscious, and she didn't seem to be in pain. At least one of the bags going into her had several stickers on the label; I supposed one of them was an analgesic. It was _so good_ to see her looking better, my heart just sang for her. It was all worth it as long as she was okay. "I'll be back in a second, I promise," I told her, and then stepped back into the cabin and inspected the comms unit. I put the headset on, and pressed the red button that had lit up with the warning light just before. It immediately opened a radio channel.

"…Cairns Control Tower Receiving…" I heard, and then tried to speak again, but I couldn't hear any feedback through my headphones.

I panicked, thinking there was some sort of transmission malfunction when I realised I needed to switch the mic on in order to speak into it. I frantically felt all around the dash for it until I finally realised it was actually on the side of my headset next to my jaw.

"…Cairns Control Tower, do you copy? You are using the emergency frequency. Do you copy?"

"Yes, this is Lara Croft," I said, excited that I could now hear my own voice through the earphones. I was far too tired to be bothered trying to remember proper radio protocol, so I just spoke to him. "I'm not a pilot, and I'm not actually in the air, but I've just come out of a helicopter and my friend has been shot. We need someone to call us an ambulance urgently."

There was a silence. "What is your carrier code?"

"Uh," I looked blankly at the dash, but after a few seconds I located a series of numbers on a plate on the actually unit itself. "Does ' _NT458_ ' sound right?"

"NT458, copy that. I can see you on our radar, a hundred kilometres north of Cooktown. Does this match your location, please report coordinates."

"I have no idea where we are," I confessed. "I don't have my phone and I can't figure out the navigation system. But if you can see us on your radar, can you please order an ambulance? My friend's lost a lot of blood, she needs an ambulance, please," I finished. "Quickly."

There was another silence. "Copy that, NT458 flagged as grounded in distress. We will pass this recording onto emergency services for dispatch. Please remain with the aircraft."

I took the headset off and released a long breath. That was it, then, I thought. An ambulance would be here shortly and they would take Sam back to hospital. I may have smiled a little, despite everything.

When I went back into the cabin, Bree had already lifted Blanket out and had her over one shoulder. Min was leaning on the exit rail, looking uncomfortable. She was trying to look interested in whatever Bree was on about, anyway. "I can't believe Blanket slept through all this!" she was saying. "Although it's probably for the best. I mean, Lara probably had to kill lots of guys to get us all out. Kids shouldn't have to see that stuff. Still, even _I_ couldn't sleep through all that!"

You could if you were drugged up to the eyeballs, I thought, doubting Blanket's sleep had any natural element to it. I seethed internally. How could Amanda get a _small child_ involved in any of this stuff? Natla, I understood; she had zero regard for mortal life. Amanda, she just shouldn't have stooped that low. I just didn't understand her.

As I was trying to figure out how to get Sam out of the helicopter, she was smiling at me. "My hero," she said, a little jokingly. I could tell she meant it, though. I winced.

That feeling of guilt every time someone congratulated me on our false escape... I just tried to reassure myself that if everyone lived, that was a good enough justification for what I'd decided to do.

"Hold this," I said to Sam rather than respond to her, putting the oxygen canister in her lap and putting the corners of all three fluid bags in my teeth. I lifted her into my shaking arms and very gingerly trying to step out of the helicopter. As soon as I was out of it, we were absolutely pummelled with rain.

Oblivious to it, Sam rested her head against my shoulder in the place she always did. Because her cheek was really close to my lips, I kissed it. It was just so wonderful to feel her against me again. She felt a little cold, though, especially with how wet we were getting; I hoped whoever was in the house had spare sheets.

When we made it to front door we were all soaked, and Bree dispensed of knocking politely and just hammered on the flyscreen, shouting, "Hello!"

I looked at the windows; there were no lights on inside. Additionally, the yard was overgrown and there were birds nesting in the gutters. "I don't think anyone's been here for quite some time," I said. "It's probably a holiday home."

Min broke away from Bree to very slowly walk over to the window and put her face against it. When she stood back, she shook her head.

I very gently put Sam down on the veranda, placing the bags up on a nearby chair. Then, I picked up the matching chair and swung it through the window Min had been looking into.

Min and Bree both yelled and ducked.

"Are you _serious_?" Min asked as I used one of the legs to bash out all the remaining glass fragments in the frame.

Sam had a big smile on her face. "Well, it is nearly Christmas," she told me. "You should have at least _tried_ to use the chimney."

I looked back at Sam and we shared a smile. I could have _leapt_ through that window, regardless of the state of my muscles. I didn't though, I just climbed inside and unlocked the door.

I struggled with my shaking arms to pick Sam back up from the ground, and in the end Min had to help me with the bags.

There were several bedrooms inside; the most comfortable bed inside was in a little girl's room. I put Sam down beside a sea of plush animals and hung the bags on the beside light.

My muscles were seizing up from the exertion, so I stood back a little to shake them out. It gave me a good view of Sam all cosy in the pink-quilted single bed. There was something incredibly comforting seeing her surrounded by colourful toys, too. Sam was already getting acquainted with some of them. She slowly lifted a plush spider up and stared it its big boggly eyes.

"Australian kids _cuddle_ these?"

I laughed, sitting down on the edge of the bed and taking it from her. "I don't know," I said, examining it. "Look, it's sort of cute." I pretended to make it run up her arm.

She would have laughed if she could have. "I think I'll stick to bears," she said. "They— _oh, my God_." She reached out and wrestled something out of the nest of toys. Stricken, she held it up and gaped at me. It was a plush cartoon centaur. "I swear to God they're haunting me," she said, and then dropped it over the side of the bed. After that, she lay her hand across her stomach, and I was reassured to see that the tips of her fingers weren't that awful blue-grey anymore.

While I was there next to her, I tucked her into the bed and put some of the soft toys under her feet to elevate them. As I sat down beside her again, I smooth the sheets down and reached forward to brush some hair from her face. She was safe, and she was warm. Just the simple feeling of having her hair threaded between my fingers made my eyes brim again. I blinked away tears and Sam caught the movement.

She put her hand over mine. "I'm still here," she said, "thanks to you."

I nearly cried just from that. "No thanks to me, you mean," I corrected her. "I'm the one who did this to you, remember?"

She watched me. "It was a setup, you know that."

I did, but I'd still fallen for it. I was _still_ falling for it. God, I was just _so tired_. I couldn't think properly. I wanted so desperately to tell Sam everything and to ask her what I should do, but I couldn't. Because I couldn't, I didn't really know what else to say. I just took her hand and held the back of it against my cheek. "Just get better, okay?"

She pointed at the bags. "Working on it," she said with a faint smile. She then looked over my shoulder at something.

I twisted to see what it was. Min was standing there, looking uncomfortable. She had a thin sheen of sweat on her forehead. It was hot, but it wasn't _that_ hot. "Lara, can I borrow you for a second?"

I looked at Sam, who gestured at me to go to Min. "Just make sure you return her in good condition," she told Min, and then gave me some consideration. "Actually, just make sure you don't return her in any _worse_ condition than she's already in."

"Some girlfriend you are," I said to her, kissing her hand again and then standing to follow Min out.

Min led me back into the hallway and switched the light on. She stood there awkwardly for a moment, bracing herself in a strange angle against the wall. She was guarding her left side and looking like she was in a lot of discomfort. "My back is killing me," she said. "Can you see what's going on?"

I mutely went around behind her and lifted up her damp singlet over her bra strap. Even as I was doing that, I could see why she was so uncomfortable. She had a huge football-sized bruise just below her strap, spreading slightly to the left. It was an awful mottled purple and yellow thing and the whole area was puffy. I touched it gently with my fingertips and she hissed. "Well, there's broken ribs in there," I said, completely sure of it. "I don't know how many. Can you breathe alright? Even if it hurts a bit?" She nodded. "Well, that's good. I suppose if it was _really_ serious you'd be like Sam."

While I was inspecting it, she asked, "I almost don't want to ask. Did you get the Stone back?"

I made a face. "No," I said. "I didn't."

She spent a few seconds absorbing that. "Fuck. That means we have to go back there at some point."

"Yes, it does," I said soberly, and let her singlet fall down again. "But I don't want to think about that right now. I just want to get Sam to a hospital."

She didn't leave, though, she just leaned there against the wall for a moment. It took her a few moments to work up to what she was going to say next. "There's something else," she said, I think referring to her injuries, "But I don't want to upset Bree."

I frowned. "Okay…" I said, worrying about her choice of words and what Min might say that might upset Bree. "The men didn't…"

She looked alarmed. " _No_!" she said quickly. "Nothing like that." Whatever it was, though, she was still was having trouble telling me.

Unfortunately, before she got to that point where she could bring herself to actually say it, Bree came running back from wherever she'd been. "There's no food!" she announced, like it was the worst possible thing that could happen to us.

Min and I shared a glance. Min didn't even bother to argue with Bree, though. "I'm going to go lie down with Blanket while we wait for the ambulance," she said, moving slowly towards one of the other bedrooms and dangling a carrot at Bree: "There's a TV in there."

It worked. "How many channels you think they get out here?" she asked Min as they disappeared into the master bedroom.

I wondered what Min had been about to say. Maybe I had been wrong and it wasn't to do with her injuries? Well, even if it wasn't to do with them, they were pretty nasty. She must be in a lot of pain, and she wasn't on analgesics like Sam.

I turned back down the hallway and spotted a bathroom at the end. In the half-open door, I could see a cabinet with mirrors mounted on the wall. Maybe there were some painkillers in there I could give to Min, I thought. I could use a few, myself.

I walked into the bathroom and opened the cabinet, rifling through it and finding nothing but very old, out of date cosmetics. I was fairly certain Min no longer had any sort of interest in those. When I swung the door shut, there were two reflections of myself in the mirror. It gave me the fright of my life.

I spun around on the spot to face my Doppelganger. She was completely still, but the fact she was wearing Sean's guns made me very nervous.

"What are _you_ doing here!" I hissed. I couldn't back away any further.

She glanced over her shoulder and put her finger to her lips. "The same as you should be doing," she said quietly. "Exactly what I'm told. Why aren't you in there asking her where the Scion is?"

My blood boiled. "Because she's just been _seriously injured_ ," I said. "Natla also told me to convince them everything was fine, and interrupting a pleasant conversation with ' _tell me where the Scion is!'_ isn't something I'd do right now." She didn't look convinced, and I wanted to throw her through the shower screen. What did she know, anyway? She was lucky I was so very tired and didn't want to alert the others. "I don't know _what you are exactly_ ," I whispered harshly. "You may look like me, but if any part of you _was_ me you wouldn't even ask that question."

"'What I am exactly' is a slave. We're _both_ slaves, Lara. You might be able to act independently to a certain extent, but in the end you're Natla's creature, just as I am. If she ordered you do kill Sam, you'd have to do it, whether you wanted to or not." I didn't know exactly what she was implying by that, but I didn't like it and I wasn't going to listen to any more of it.

I shoved her roughly. "Get out," I said. "After everything you've done, just _get out_."

"I'm watching you," she said, and then slipped out of the bathroom door.

I leaned against the sink, breathing slowly to try and bring my pulse back down. I'd ask Sam in hospital, I thought. After she's had the surgery, when she's well enough. I didn't think Natla would be too happy about that timeline, but she hadn't been _that_ specific about how quickly things should progress, only that I needed to be careful.

Worrying about Sam, I went back into the bedroom she was in, leaning against the doorframe. She'd shifted a little and was hugging a plush panda. It was gorgeous. "How are you doing?"

She yawned and gave me a little smile. "A million times better right at this second."

That smile, she was just _so_ beautiful. Even now, behind an oxygen mask and attached to three separate bags of God knows what. It's all worth it, I thought. It's all worth it if I get to keep you. "I'd do anything for you," I said, and the wondered if that was a very wise thing to say.

She didn't catch any hidden meaning. I didn't want her to, anyway. I just wanted her to rest and recover _so I could find out as soon as possible where she'd hidden the Scion_. _I needed that Scion._

My breath caught in my throat, but fortunately I managed to hide it. The moment passed.

"Where's this ambulance you called for, anyway?" Sam wondered aloud. "I mean, I guess we're pretty far from Cairns, but they should be here by now."

That was actually a good point. "I didn't give them the exact address," I said. "Maybe they're having trouble finding the place." I looked out the window; it looked like the front door of a washing machine. I sighed. "I should probably go outside and flag them down off the highway."

Sam didn't look all that happy about my plan, but she didn't try to stop me. "Be careful."

On the way out, I fished a torch out of a bits and bobs drawer in the kitchen, and then leaned my head into the master bedroom. "I'm going to go meet the ambulance in case they can't find us."

Min and Bree were lying on the bed with Blanket still passed out beside them, and Min _still_ looked awfully uncomfortable. When I'd spoken to them, they'd both been very intent on someone serious on the telly. I ducked in a moment to see what the fuss was about.

There was footage of the Frost International mine, and the reporter was interviewing several burly looking men. I didn't recognise any of them, but they sure had a lot to say about me. Fortunately at least one of them was lying about what I'd done, and he _sounded_ like he was exaggerating, too. Embarrassingly so, it was painful to watch him making a fool of himself.

I made a frustrated noise. "I don't have time for this," I said angrily at the TV, as if the reporter could have actually heard me. "I have more important things to worry about. Like where that ambulance is."

"It's probably something to do with the weather," Min suggested, very carefully not moving anything. She didn't look too good.

I watched her for a moment, and then decided I probably had time to worry about her later.

The highway wasn't actually very far away from the front of the house at all, but because the rain was coming in sideways it was still difficult to see the house from the road. Especially if you didn't know you were actually looking for a house.

I switched the torch on and waved it backward and forward. My arms were already tired and it was only a minute or two before I wasn't sure if my muscles would allow me to keep going. Furthermore, the repetitive motion was hypnotic and a couple of times I nearly drifted off right there, standing up on the side of the highway.

I don't know how long I kept going, but eventually I saw the glow of headlines on the road. There were lots of them, too; that was great. Maybe they'd sent more than one ambulance.

I turned towards them and waved frantically with both arms, my heart pounding. God, I hoped they would see me!

They did, and the vehicles all pulled over in formation around me. They were white four wheel drives with yellow stripes; they weren't your ordinary ambulance, but I supposed special vehicles were needed out here.

"In the house!" I called to them through the pouring rain, pointing towards the front door. "She's in the house!"

As men got out of the vehicles, however, they didn't approach me or even try to greet me. I didn't understand why not until a door opened and I read the word _Police_ on it.

"Lara Croft!" someone was saying through a megaphone on top of one of the vehicles. "Put the object on the ground and your hands in the air."

_What?_

With rising panic and the blood draining from my face, I looked at the vehicles spread around me. The men were holding guns and they were all aiming at me. I didn't understand; I'd asked for an ambulance _._ Sam needed an ambulance!

" _Put the object on the ground and your hands in the air, or we will shoot_!"

Agape, I followed their instructions. Two men approached me with their pistols raised, and then spun me grabbed my wrists.

"Lara Croft," one of them said as he handcuffed me and the rain blew into my mouth. "You are under arrest for the murder of Sean Frost."


	40. Chapter 40

I was so stunned by what was happening that I must not have done what the police instructed me to, because in a heartbeat my face was being pressed into the wet asphalt and someone's foot was on my head.

I couldn't very well say I _hadn't_ shot Sean Frost, could I? On the other hand, I couldn't confess I had and claim self-defence, either. If I explained what was _really_ going on at the mine, they'd commit me to an entirely different institution.

I kept waiting for Natla's hold over me to kick in; she _had_ said I must succeed, after all. I didn't think I'd be looking for the Scion much inside a jail cell. But what would she have had me do in this situation? How do you fight against half a dozen armed police officers when you're exhausted beyond belief, injured and weaponless? I could feel the spirits moving around on my stomach. God, I _wished_ I could figure out how to use them while I was conscious!

I just listened to a broad Australian accent shouting me my rights at me as I stared into the pouring rain in front of the house. I couldn't see the windows, which meant no one inside could see me. The police could arrest me right here and none of the others would know. Sam wouldn't know. Shit – _Sam_!

This couldn't be happening, I thought. On top of everything, this just couldn't be happening. I found my voice. "Sam," I begged, half submerged in a deep puddle. "Sam, you have to get Sam to hospital!"

One of the officers walked over to me; it was a woman. I was comforted by that for a fraction of a second until it became clear what she was after. "'Sam's inside'," she repeated, and I nodded. "Is that Samantha Nishimura?" She began walking towards the house, gun drawn.

Oh, God, they didn't want _her,_ too, did they? "Don't hurt her!" I yelled after her. "Please, she really needs help! We'll answer whatever questions you want if you'll just get us to hospital!"

"Watch up on that shoulder," one of the policemen above me was saying to the other, obviously about me. "It's bleeding." Not again, I thought. I was going to end up with less blood than Sam had.

The constable shrugged. "I'm wearing gloves."

"Then I hope you waterproofed them," the first man said, and then blew water off his face. "Not that it would make a difference in _this_ weather."

"Yeah," was the response. "Forty years here and I hate the wet season."

Since they seemed so intent on making small talk, I interrupted them. "I'm sorry, but my friend has lost a lot of blood, she needs to go to hospital. We asked for an ambulance!"

The officer wasn't rude to me, even though they were here for my arrest. "Well, she'll have a wait, and you will, too," he said, but at least he sounded sombre about it. "A tourist boat with eighty passengers capsized in Cairns because of the weather about an hour ago. They already had to fly paramedics and medical equipment up from Townsville for that."

Wet gravel dug into my cheek as all of that sank in. Could things get any worse? It was as if the whole universe was conspiring against me. Was there even anything else that could go wrong? "Sam needs it more than me," I said. "Could you drive her down to the hospital yourselves? We'd happily go with you."

The constable made a non-committal noise. "We have to wait for the sergeant to make a call on that," he said. "Most likely we'll just stay here until the ambulance comes."

While I was staring through the rain, trying to decide if I thought I could call crocodile spirits in a half-inch deep puddle, I saw some commotion near the front veranda. It was raining far too heavily for me to see it exactly what was going on, but there were two figures walking up towards the road.

When they stepped into the headlights of the car, there were a few shouts and then a collective silence fell over the police.

It was my Doppelganger and she was frog-marching the female constable up the driveway with one of Sean's guns to the back of her head.

On top of me, one of the police officers knelt slowly back. "What the hell?" he whispered. "Did you know she had a twin?" The other policeman must have shaken his head. "Yeah. The least Investigations could have done was _warn_ us there were two of them."

When the two of them reached us, my Doppelganger looked sharply in my direction. "You've got to be kidding me," she said to me, echoing my earlier thoughts. "You've got to be bloody kidding me." Angry, she turned back to the police officers. "Who's in charge?"

To her credit, the female constable managed to look completely composed.

"I am," a voice said into the megaphone. "Sergeant Grigg. Now, before we get ourselves into a big mess, let's talk this through." He was using a deliberately calm voice. "We're all listening to you. What is it you want?"

My Doppelganger looked sideways at me, narrowing her eyes. "I want _everyone_ to know that Lara Croft _is a fraud_!" she announced, sounding incredibly bitter. "If you're going to arrest me, you're going to hear the truth!"

I stared up at her, my jaw open so far some of the puddle was getting in. What on _earth_ was she on about?

Even though I could only see one or two of the policemen from my position flat on the ground, they were looking between my Doppelganger and I. "Are you Lara Croft?" Sergeant Grigg's voice asked my Doppelganger.

"No, I'm the woman who's going to reveal the _real_ Lara Croft to the world!" she called to them. "You all think she's some _action hero_ , right?" She waited for them to respond. When they didn't, she prompted them. " _Right_?"

"Yes, that's right," Sergeant Grigg said slowly.

"Wrong!" My Doppelganger yelled. "She can't fire a gun to save herself! I have _no idea_ how she survived on that island in Japan. She's just an archaeologist with a smart girlfriend whose daddy runs a media empire!"

The police shifted uncomfortably around me, and at the mention of 'gun' I could head the quiet sound of a stud on someone's belt popping. He was ready to draw again.

"So how do you think they hid the fact Lara Croft can't do any of the amazing things they're saying she can? How? Take a wild guess!"

Even through the cottonwool in my head, I knew where this was going; I think everyone did. She looked _exactly_ like me. Of course they knew where this was going.

She gestured to herself. "They found some poor mug who _could_ do those things and exploited her, that's how!" She was breathing heavily. God, she was good. She was so good it was _chilling_. I was certain I could _never_ act that well. How could she be me and yet be so very much like Natla? "They told me they'd keep it a secret and pay me off the books. They said it had to be that way, or people would find out. They didn't even give me a contract, and I _believed_ them because I was _so excited_ to be part of the movie. I was _an idiot_." She looked at me. "You _never_ meant to pay me was all one big plot to not pay me a penny!"

"How would you like us to help you?" Sergeant Grigg's steady voice asked her, trying to diffuse her.

"You know, I asked myself that very question," my Doppelganger said indulgently. "Every night. I lay awake in bed and asked myself, 'What would I like to happen to Lara Croft?' I thought about all the things I could do. I could kill that precious girlfriend of hers in front of her. I could burn down that big expensive house she just bought so she'd have nowhere to live. I could commit some awful crime and frame her. I thought about _how brilliant_ it would feel knowing she was locked in prison. She deserves it."

Sergeant Grigg spoke very carefully. "Did you do any of those things?"

My Doppelganger laughed wildly, cocking her pistol at the Constable's temple. Six hands reached for their guns, but didn't draw them. "I did _all_ of them, and every time I did something I expected it to feel good, but it didn't. I felt nothing. It was then I realised I didn't just want her to suffer, I wanted _everyone_ to know. I wanted her precious loyal fans to know what a fraud she really is!"

"Okay," Sergeant Grigg was saying calmly. "Okay. We can help. Would you like us to engage a journalist for you to speak to in exchange for the safe release of Constable McMahon?"

The Doppelganger shook her head. "I don't care anymore," she said. "I just want _everyone_ to know."

As a finale, she held up the gun and threw it on the ground at the foot of the car with the megaphone. The matching one followed, as did Constable McMahon's gun. "These are the weapons I used," she said. "I guess I won't need them in jail. At least they have tellies in there so I can watch the spectacular fall of Lara Croft." Then, before Constable McMahon discovered she was free to go so she could move and the police could shoot, my Doppelganger lowered herself to the road beside me, lying prone with her hands on her head.

No one could really believe the turn of events, so it took them longer than it usually would have to react.

After a few seconds, though, the police determined it was safe and all fell on her. As she was being cuffed, we made eye contact along the gravel with the rain splashing between us. Now her monologue was complete, she had the same blank expression Old Johnson had had. 'You have a job to do,' she mouthed to me. 'Do it.' Then, she was wrenched up and escorted to the back of one of the vans.

I lay there on the ground with my mouth open and full of rainwater, staring at the road where she'd been lying.

The police on top of me were calling out to Sergeant Grigg. "What do we do with her?"

Sergeant Grigg was shaking his head as he walked over to us. "This is the _worst_ researched sting I've ever done," he said, sounding angry. "I don't know what they fucking do in head office, but they're determined to make us all look like fucking idiots and get us all killed. Get her up. We still need to question her and that Nishimura girl. Debrief them if they need it."

Sam, I thought. "She's in the house. We can all go in there."

Still dazed, the police lead me towards the house, approaching it as if there might be _more_ crazy gun-toting copies of me inside. After they'd checked all the rooms – and frightened the life out of Bree and Min – they sat me down in the kitchen and asked me a series of questions about where I'd been at various times. I answered everything truthfully, because there was no sense in lying. My Doppelganger seemed well capable of taking care of details by herself.

I floundered when they asked me about the Doppelganger – especially what her name was – and eventually Sergeant Grigg told the men to ease up on me. "She's obviously badly injured and she's just been held hostage by a mad woman. That's enough for now. She's clearly cooperating. We can call her in later."

When they let me go, I went straight back into the room with Sam. One of the policemen had been in there with her, but she had _no_ idea what was going on and he'd given up trying to get any sense of out her.

"How is she?" I asked as I passed him in doorway.

He shook his head. "Confused," he said and put a comforting hand on my shoulder. "I can't really say this on the record," he said, "but don't worry. We'll put that crazy stunt woman away for a long time, I reckon."

I nodded, but part of me expected she'd find some way to escape, anyway. She was Natla's creature, after all.

I walked up to the bed. "Lara?" Sam _didn't_ sound great, actually. "Did _you_ call the police?"

"Not exactly," I said, sitting down on the edge and touching her hand. I had no intention of explaining all of it to her, now. I just wanted her to relax. "It's a long story…" I looked immediately up at the IVs while I was speaking to her; there was still some blood left in the red bag, but one of the clear ones was empty. It was the one with all the stickers on it, too. No more painkillers.

"You look like Yamatai," she said as I disconnected the empty bag and put it on the bedside table. "Minus the hole in your middle."

"I think you have that covered for the both of us," I said, automatically touching my hair. It was soaking wet and I could fell all the dirt and grit in it. I was actually making the bed wet by sitting down on it; I shuffled a little away from her so I didn't get her wet.

"No, stay here." There was a note of desperation in her voice. "It hurts," she explained quietly. "I feel better when you're here."

"Oh, Sam…" I sighed, stroking her hand and so clearly remembering that pain myself. It had been absolutely disabling. In fact, several times I'd nearly passed out from it and if that happened to Sam then I—

— _wouldn't be able to find the Scion. I needed to ask her about it right now, right here. Before she deteriorates._

No, I thought, panicking at the sudden intrusion. There was a certain inevitability about what I was hearing; I had known it would come sooner or later. Now that it was here, though, it was far too soon. I couldn't ask her. Not yet. I can't upset her, not when she's like this.

_But what if she doesn't wake up? I need to ask her now._

Especially if she's not going to wake up! She wouldn't expect me to, she wouldn't expect me to ask her right now, when she's—

— _Lara. The fate of the world is at stake. She understands that and she still thinks I'm determined to stop Natla. I can make it work._

I just sat there, paralysed by my internal dialogue, my tongue trapped behind my teeth. Sam had noticed something was bothering me, and she was watching me carefully. I watched her powerlessly. What would happen to her when she told me? Natla hadn't given me any instructions about hurting her, only anyone else who guessed about me. Hopefully that meant something. She could just tell me and then I could run off somewhere far away and get the Scion.

The thought of leaving her was awful, but the thought of staying and potentially hurting her was worse. The ambulance would hopefully come soon, I thought. She's safest here.

Without my input at all, I spoke. The worst part was I knew exactly what to say to her. "Sam," I said. "I need to stop Natla."

She flinched momentarily, but there was some degree of acceptance on her face. She licked her lips with some difficulty, they were quite dry. "I knew at some point you were going to say something like this." She stroked my hand with her thumb. "But I don't want you to," she said. "I don't want you to leave me. Do you _have_ to?"

No. No, not now... Please, not now… "Yes."

She closed her eyes for just a second. "Lara, I'm scared," she murmured. "I'm really scared. I don't want to do this without you."

My heart _broke_. "Sam," my mouth said. "I need to break that Scion into pieces and hide them so Natla can _never_ find it."

She nodded. "I know you do. I just…" She could hardly say it. "I just don't want you to go."

"It will be okay. I just need to know where the Scion is so I can break it," I said gently, hating myself for it. All I _wanted_ to do was pull that oxygen mask off her and kiss those dry lips. Touch noses with her. Press our cheeks together.

She considered me for a few moments, her eyebrows together over her eyes. In the end, she just nodded. "Okay, okay. Just come back to me? Please." She swallowed. "It really hurts…"

She wasn't following where I was trying to lead her. _I was too fucking tired for this; I needed to be more direct_. "I need you to tell me where you hid the Scion."

She frowned at me, and there was a really strange expression on her face. Her eyes flickered between mine and my torso, but she didn't explain herself. "Lara," she said in an odd voice. "Why would I know where it is? You helped me escape. I can't even remember _that_ properly, let alone have been awake enough to get the Scion back without you noticing."

I didn't understand. "No, before that," I said. "You didn't take it out of my backpack? In order to separate it from the stone?"

She shook her head. "I haven't touched it since Atlantis. And why would I want to separate it from the stone?"

"Well, you had Diane's book open, I just thought that…" To be honest, I wasn't sure what I thought that meant. It had made sense to me at the time, but it didn't anymore. Of course, I was so tired that _nothing_ made sense anymore.

"Yeah, I did? There was some stuff in there about 'radiating curses' which kind of fit what you said you felt around her," she said, obviously feeling like she needed to explain herself to me. "Actually, there's a _lot_ about curses. Aboriginal Dreamtime stories are more violent than the Old Testament, the spirits get angry _really_ easily. I was just reading about that. It had nothing to do with the Scion."

I sat back, confused. Even enslaved I was having trouble following events, I was just so dazed and exhausted and there was just so much happening that I didn't have time to process it. I strained to think on the conversation I'd had with Natla and why she was so sure Sam had done it. I couldn't remember it, and I could hardly remember what had happened in that space of time between when I'd arrived at the hotel and when I'd shot Sam. All I'd really thought about was that awful video – I cringed remembering it – and about the spirits. And sleep. God, and _sleep._

Had _I_ done it during one of my blackouts? Had it been me, after all?

"Are you okay?" Sam asked carefully.

I was still frowning. "I don't know," I said. "You really don't know anything about it?"

She shook her head. "I would have told you," she said. That much I knew was true. It wasn't Sam who'd moved it. With the drama surrounding that awful video, I actually thought I might not even have told her that Natla had wanted me to dispose of the stone.

There was a voice in the doorway. "Hey, Lara?" I twisted on the bed. It was Bree. "Min wants to talk to you."

Why would she want to—

— _Min_.

Cold realisation washed over me; I hadn't told _Sam_ that Natla had asked me to separate the Stone from the Scion, but I'd told Min.

No, I thought. No, no, no… My face smiled. "Okay, I'll be right there."

I looked back at Sam, and she squeezed my hand and said, "I don't want to let you go."

"Neither," I told her voluntarily. "Never. So don't make me have to, okay?"

She nodded and went back to hugging the panda.

I didn't want to leave. I actually just wanted to crawl into the bed and wait for the ambulance with my arms around her, and pretend Natla _was_ dead. I couldn't, though. My legs stood me up and I followed Bree into the master bedroom.

Min was still lying in the position she'd been in before, looking pale. Bree spent a few moments pulling the sheets over her and Blanket and tucking them both in. Then, she smoothed down a Band-Aid she'd put on Min's forehead earlier that was threatening to slide off from the sweat. "There are more in there," she told Min, pointing to a small first aid kit she'd obviously excavated out of one of the many drawers. She kissed Min's hairline before she left, giving her girlfriend one last worried look and then shutting the door behind her.

I just stared at Min. God, I couldn't do this. I couldn't do whatever Natla wanted me to do. Min was obviously in some serious discomfort.

Min gestured towards the kitchen. "What the fuck are the police doing here? They came in here to ask me some stuff about some stunt woman and then they took one look at me and said it could wait," she said as I came and stood beside the bed. "They wouldn't tell me anything."

I took a deep breath and released it. "They were arresting me for shooting Sean Frost," I said. "Initially. Then my Doppelganger pulled a gun on them and confessed to it."

Min's eyebrows shot up for a moment before lowering right back down over her eyes again. There was nothing wrong with _her_ ability to think, _she_ wasn't sleep deprived. Or at least, if she was, she wasn't having any of the same bother with it that I was. "Why was your Doppelganger here and why would she confess to something you did? That doesn't make sense."

My throat locked up for a moment on whatever I'd been about to say. Please don't guess what happened to me, I thought. _Please_ don't guess. Not when you're like this. "God, it's such a long story," my mouth said very smoothly, "which I'll be happy to tell you once we're warm and dry in a hospital somewhere."

She blinked. "Yeah," she said, accepting what I'd said. "That doesn't surprise me. Listen," her tone changed. "Lara, I need to ask you something."

 _What a coincidence._ "I need to ask you, something, too," I said, and had been about to continue when she interrupted me.

"Me first," she said, not letting me interrupt her. "Lara, I can't—" She made a face. "You know what? Forget about me, actually," she said and then started again. "Bree's brother is a good guy, but he's a bit all over the place. And her parents are nice, but…" She made a face. "Well, it's hard to explain. My parents don't even know I'm seeing her or that I broke up with the guy I was seeing in my early twenties."

I listened, but I didn't understand why she was telling me this _or why it was more important that the Scion._ I opened my mouth to speak again, but again she interrupted me.

"Lara, if something happens to me…" She was trying to sound as casual as she could, but there was something behind what she was saying. Something serious. It made me very, very nervous. "Can you make sure Bree will be okay?"

I frowned at her. "You have a few broken ribs and a giant bruise across your back," I said. "That's not terminal." Having said that, though, she did look pale. Bad pain could make someone that pale, though. I certainly knew all about that.

She didn't say anything to that, but my answer seemed very important to her. I wondered why not, and worried about her. "Of course I'll do it, Min," I said, which was true. "You don't even have to ask."

She nodded, a faint smile on her face as she took my hand and held it firmly. "Thanks," she said through a very tight throat and then tried to dismiss the conversation. "What were you going to say?"

Here we go, I thought, and as expected I lost control of my mouth again. "I know you hid the Scion," I said, and surprisingly, a felt a smile move across my lips. "That was _genius_. Where did you even hide it?"

She looked surprised for a moment, and then copied my smile and laughed shortly, embarrassed by my compliment. "Well, you were out of it, and I figured you wouldn't be making the decision anytime soon," she sounded chuffed, but she didn't tell me where it was. I _wished_ she had, right at that moment. "And like I said, I'm no action hero. It might have been the one opportunity I ever got to do something useful for humanity."

"You mean apart from being a really gorgeous, really sweet person?" As soon as that had come out of my mouth, I was absolutely certain all the colour drained from my face. Of course, I thought, involuntarily wandering over to the wardrobe, _Natla_ had enslaved me. If my Doppelganger was displaying Natla's perfect delivery of perfect lies, naturally I would be capable of pouring sexuality into everything the way Natla did. I felt sick. "This is pretty torn up," my mouth said as I looked down at my long-sleeved top. "Mind if I…?" I motioned taking it off, and then took it off before Min could stop me.

Min had been looking very uncomfortable ever since I'd told her she was gorgeous and sweet, but she didn't say anything.

Turning away from her, I opened the wardrobe with my arms outstretched. My hips had positioned themselves in such a way that my curves would have been very pronounced. In the wardrobe there were only men's clothes, but there was a passable long-sleeved sun-shirt with _Rip Curl_ up the arms. I had been relieved at the thought I was about to put it on, but my body had other ideas.

I turned slowly, holding the shirt in front of my torso. "What do you think?"

Min still looked uncomfortable, but she nodded politely.

I just smiled and tossed it on one of the bed posts. "It's a bit too hot to put it on right now," I said. I climbed onto the bed between peacefully sleeping Blanket and Min. I remained on all-fours for a few moments while I adjusted one of the pillows, and just wearing my sports bra I can imagine what sort of view I was giving her. Please stop, I tried to will myself. She'll probably tell me anyway if I ask her again, do I really have to do _all this_?

_I bet Min wouldn't want Bree to think anything had happened between us. Bree would be absolutely devastated if she thought Min was cheating on her with her idol, absolutely devastated. Min would be well aware of that._

Just ask her again, I thought furiously as I let Min get a good view of my cleavage. Just ask her, I don't need to do this!

Her eyes had been darting between my breasts and my shoulder. "That shoulder doesn't look great," she said. "You should probably bandage it."

I looked over at the first aid kit on the bedside table. "Would you mind?"

She swallowed. "I guess not," she said, and with more difficulty that she should have had, she reached over and grabbed it, unzipping it and fishing out a bandage. Her hands were shaking. One of mine slipped up to my shoulder and pushed down the strap of my sports bra so it lay across my elbow. I didn't want to look down and see what the result was; I could guess. She probably wouldn't have been able to see _everything_ – not that she hadn't already seen it on that video – but there wasn't much that would've been hidden. And after that video, the feeling of showing anyone flesh was just revolting, regardless of whether it was a friend or not. I felt so vulnerable and so _dirty_. I hated it, I hated _every_ second of it and I wanted to grab the sheet and wrap myself tightly inside.

I didn't know how the slavery worked; if there was some link between Natla and I or if I was just following her instructions in the way I subconsciously knew she'd intended me to. Fuck you, Natla, I thought. If there's some way you can hear this, I hope you _burn in hell_.

She was _very_ careful to keep her eyes forward as she bandaged my shoulder, and I appreciated it. It was still comforting that she wasn't staring at me. "There," she said, and then relaxed back against the padded bedhead again.

I inspected it. It wasn't bad, actually, and I probably _did_ need it. "Thanks," I said, far more sensually than I'd meant to say it. I didn't put my bra back up, though. I tried and tried, but my hands just wouldn't let me make that movement.

I leaned down on one elbow next to her. "So how did you do it, anyway?" I asked. "Did you just hide the Scion somewhere in the hotel? Or at that shed?"

God, yes, I thought. Keep asking her. Put the cleavage away and just _ask_ her!

She laughed nervously. "It's a long story," she said, repeating what I'd said before. "I'll show you where it is when this is all over."

I pretended to smile. "It would make me feel _so much better_ if I could just find it now and break it apart. Three pieces would be harder for her to find that one."

Min shrugged. "That's true," she said, and my impression was that she was trying to sound really casual and relaxed even though she wasn't. "But it's kind of hard for me to explain where it is, so… it's better if I show you. I will, once this is all over."

Don't do this, Min, I thought. Just tell me where it is so I can take the fight well away from you guys and back onto that ship. If it's just me it doesn't even matter what happens, I can handle it. Just tell me where it is!

"Why don't you show me now?" my mouth asked as I leant over her. God, I wasn't going to… was I? My lips lightly touched her cheek; she tasted salty from that thin layer of sweat. I kissed down her jaw, and she inhaled sharply. God, it – wasn't disgusting. It was such a horrible situation, but I took comfort in one thought: at least it was _Min_ I ended up being compelled to do this to. I knew her well enough to know she wouldn't take advantage of this.

One my treacherous hands wandered under her singlet and lifted it up a little so that when my breast finally fell out of my sports bra, it brushed across her stomach.

I expected her to stop me; I _wished_ she would stop me, or tell me where it was, or anything, but she didn't. She just lay there, trying to not breathe heavily because of her ribs, and letting me kiss her and touch her. It was when I put fingers on one side of her chin and brought her into a kiss that she stopped me. Not before her tongue had brushed mine, though.

"Lara," she said in a really strange tone of voice as she pulled away. "This isn't going to work."

I pulled back, I had thought her breathing was something to do with her reaction to being touched by me, but she actually looked _scared_. Really, really scared.

"Why not?" I whispered next to her ear. "We both know there's something here…"

"Because I can't feel my legs," she said flatly, and I could hear the waiver in her voice. "I was going to tell you before that something had been happening, but I didn't want to stress any of you out."

_What?_

God, I… Min? I wanted to say something comforting, or at least acknowledge the gravity of what she'd said, but my body wouldn't let me. Instead, it did something _wholly_ inappropriate as a last-ditch attempt to salvage its grand blackmail plans, and began to undo the stud on her jeans. "Let me feel them, then," I murmured, kissing under her chin.

Unexpectedly, she caught my wrist in a vice-like grip. "Fuck," she said quietly. "How many of you _are there_?"

Before I could even internally react to that, my other hand flew up to her throat. "You asked for it," I hissed, and straddled her hips. "Tell me where the Scion is."

She just stared at me with her lips pressed together, looking as stoic as she could. There was no surprise, there. I wondered how long ago she'd guessed something was not right about me.

"Tell me," I said evenly, just horrified at what I was being forced to do. All of it. "You don't even want to know what I can do to you to make you tell me."

She deliberately looked away.

Min, please,I thought, just tell me where it is. Let me handle the action and the heroics. _Please_.

My hand squeezed her throat and she coughed and then winced at the chest pain that caused her. "Tell Natla she can suck it," she managed to force out.

My face was very close to hers. "Oh, you want to play this game?" I warned her. "You really want to play it like this? I'm good at this, Min. I know what matters to you. What you _really_ care about."

 _That_ made her look at me. Her lips were pressed in a very tight line.

"You want me to take care of Bree if something happens to you, Min?" I said, Natla's signature half-smile creeping onto my face. "You want me to take _really_ good care of her, don't you? Because if something happened to her, that would really upset you, wouldn't it?"

She didn't say anything, but her throat bobbed.

"She's pretty cute," my mouth said. "Men like little curvy blonde girls, don't they? And there are a _lot_ of men on that ship, Min."

"I will fucking kill all of you," Min told me, and, God, I agreed with her. I wanted to watch her do it.

"Or," my mouth mused, "perhaps she'd rather enjoy watching her 'future wife' tortured? Two birds with one stone, that idea." I smirked, "That is, of course, assuming she's happy to push around a wheelchair for the rest of her life, anyway. Maybe she'll change her mind."

There was a knock on the door. "Guys?"

We both looked at the door; that was Bree's voice. Min opened her mouth and I held a finger up. "Speak of the devil…." I said with a smile, and then leaned close to her. "You try and get the attention of the police, and I swear to God I will break her little neck before you've so much as said a single syllable. You know I'll do it."

I slid smoothly off the bed, fixed my bra and went and opened the door with a bright smile. "Come in," I said. "We're just finishing."

She looked suspiciously down at my bare torso, but then relaxed when she saw the bandage. "Sergeant Grigg is actually really cool," she was saying as she wandered in. "He was telling me all about how the cops out here have _thousands_ of square kilometres…" Her words died on her lips when she saw Min's expression. She looked from Min to me and her eyes grew as wide as saucers. She then took a deep breath and opened her mouth as she backed away.

Before she could scream, I already had my hand around her throat, choking off the air she was planning to use. She didn't dare move. "No," I said firmly. "We won't be doing that. Not if we don't want our girlfriends to end up like Sam."

Sam…

"So, tell me, are you going to scream?" She shook her head. I kept my hand on her throat anyway, just in case she changed her mind. "Min here hid Natla's Scion somewhere, but she won't tell me where. I was thinking we could all have a little chat about that."

Just tell me where it is! Just tell me!

"Min," Bree whispered, and I let her speak because I was thinking she might encourage Min to spill the location. Instead, she said, "Please help me…"

Min looked down her body and helplessly up at Bree, and then she made an attempt to stand up. I let her, because I knew it wasn't going to work. She must have had _some_ feeling and _some_ movement at least, because she was able to get her legs off the mattress. But when she went to stand up, even though she was bracing herself on the bed, she _fell,_ and she fell hard.

Flat on her stomach on the floor she writhed, eyes squinted shut and teeth grit. She was in _so much pain_. Even if I hadn't been the one to injure her, I couldn't watch, I couldn't watch myself use all of it. I couldn't be part of this. I wanted to check out into sweet unconsciousness, I didn't want to see any of this. Mercilessly, my body wouldn't let me.

God, what had I agreed to? How could I have let Natla do this to them?

Watching Min, Bree had started to silently cry. "I'm sorry, Min," she said. "I'm sorry!" She clamped her eyes shut. "It's in her back pocket." Then, she started to sob in earnest.

It took me a few seconds to realise what Bree had said. That was where the Scion was? I looked down at Min. Just like Larson; he'd put the Scion in _his_ pockets, too. More of Natla's collateral damage.

"Bree…!" Min hissed. "No…!"

"I felt it before when I was helping you up the stairs," she said through her tears. "And as if I wouldn't know what it was! I've seen the movie a thousand times!"

"Good choice," I told Bree and released her. She _rushed_ over to Min. I just walked over to them, bent over and reached into Min's pocket. When I pulled my hand out, the full Scion was in it. Thank God, I thought as I looked at it. Thank God, before I could do anything else to them!

… _and immediately return it to me._

I could have cried tears of joy myself that that was over, and I hoped beyond hope that somehow I wouldn't remember any of this if I was freed. _When_ I was freed, I corrected myself. Deep within the core of me, I _felt_ it: I _wouldn't_ let Natla get away with this.

Still only in my trousers and sports bra, I slid up the window, checked the veranda and then climbed out onto it. There were two police in the patrol cars out the front where they were holding my Doppelganger, but I wasn't going out to the road. The rest of the police were talking in the kitchen, I could hear them laughing. No one was going to see me slip out; I'd made such a show of helping them with their questions before that they wouldn't expect me to try and run away.

Behind me, I could hear Bree crying and whispering Min's name as I left the room.

Sam… As I edged along the veranda and passed the window in her room, I spotted her. She was lying in bed, hugging the panda with her eyes jammed shut. The blood bag was nearly empty.

My body wouldn't let me linger there and watch her, though. I just ran out into the pouring rain and disappeared into the bushland behind the house.

The helicopter was still parked near that dam, and no one had thought to remind the police that I'd used it to contact them. When I sat in it and turned the rotors, I could barely hear them over the violent storm.

My spirits had returned now I was far away from Blanket, and about half of them had started to glow. "Some help you are," I told them bitterly, and then lifted the helicopter off the ground, pivoting in the air and heading back towards Amanda's ship and the perpetrators of all of this.

Natla, I thought, reciting her name over and over in my head like a bitter incantation. What kind of delusional monster was she, anyway? How could _anyone_ hope rule an empire when they had so little regard for the value of each human life? Atlantis could not possibly have been the utopia she described. Not with someone like _her_ ruling it. No ruler should be so intent on destroying innocent lives, regardless of the reason. _That_ wasn't the hallmark of a good leader.

Poor Bree and poor Min, my heart just ached for them. The images of Min falling on the floor kept rushing back to me and reliving them over and over was nearly unbearable. They truly were innocent in all of this. They were just two people who made friends with the wrong person. Them and Sam… And poor little Blanket, being carted directly into the line of fire like useful object and not the sweet little girl that she was. God knows what had happened to Macca and Jammas, too; I hoped they were okay. None of them deserved any of this.

As I flew directly into the storm, something fell into place.

There was someone who had deserved it, though: Diane. Despite deserving it, though, she'd gotten off scot-free. There just _had_ to be something in that. Something I could use, if I could only figure out how. I wished I could _think_ properly, but I was just so sore, so tired and just so completely sick of each escalating atrocity inflicted on us that I could barely string one thought with another. But if it was going to ever be over, I just _had_ to figure out a way to defeat Natla and Amanda, regardless of all these obstacles. I'd done it in Yamatai, and I could do it here. Somehow.

Ignoring the lightening flashing around me, I steered towards the cargo ship anchored on the horizon.

This was it, I thought. No going back, now. I was going to finish this, for all of them.


	41. Chapter 41

Natla and Amanda weren't by the helipad when, despite the howling wind and the rain coming in sideways, I managed to safely land on it. They weren't in the cargo hold they'd been in originally, either, and while I was begging the universe for the sake of my shaking, sore muscles to not have to search the entire ship, I spotted Natla at the bow. Amanda was with her, and they were arguing.

They stopped when they saw me.

Natla was smiling when I walked straight up to her. "That is one impressive scowl," she told me. "Which means you succeeded, and quickly. I'll never doubt you again."

I took the Scion out of the pocket of my pants and placed it in her hand. The second I'd done that, something snapped inside me. I felt like a weight had been lifted from me and as she spoke, her words had less gravity. "Did you need to kill anyone to get this? Samantha? The Korean girl or—" She watched the way my face moved and stopped when she got to Min. "Maybe not kill," she said, smiling as she read me perfectly. She looked me up and down. "But something else, perhaps. Something that explains your lack of clothing. Did you both enjoy it?"

"She's paralysed thanks to you."

Natla had no reaction to that statement whatsoever. "So was Qualopec, also thanks to me, and he'd fathered dozens of children by the time Atlantis fell." She looked me critically up and down as she spoke. "Lara, how is it in every conflict you come out as wet, dirty and bloody as possible? We can't have that." She turned back to Amanda. "Clean her up and prepare for the ritual, I don't want to ascend beside someone who looks like they just crawled out of their own grave."

Amanda didn't move an inch, she just crossed her arms. "Sorry, you must be confusing me with one of your minions," she said. "And someone who actually thinks your precious ritual is necessary."

Natla just smiled pleasantly, but her lack of entertainment indicated she was less than pleased. "We've been over this. It takes three to rule."

Amanda exhaled. "Well back in Atlantis you guys didn't have the Slave Stone," she said. "It won't take three anymore. Two people can use the Scion to build millions-strong armies and we can use the Slave Stone instead of a third person with the Scion to control them. No third person required."

"The triumvirate with the Scion is a much more effective and encompassing way to—"

Amanda interrupted her with a frustrated noise. "Are you serious? You only want _her_ involved," she gestured at me, "because you want to spend eternity fucking with her and fucking her."

Natla laughed at that. "Well, there's certainly an element of truth there," she said and glanced back at me with a look that turned my stomach. "But you'll quickly find that trying to overthrow existing regimes is more complicated than just sending in millions of bodies to die on battlefields. It's better to level the site and start building from scratch, believe me." She began to walk away from me, but stopped when she got to Amanda and put a falsely collegial hand on her shoulder. "Consequently," she said casually, "the beauty of how much you two hate each other lessens the likelihood that you'll make _me_ the third wheel you keep saying you don't need." She glanced over her shoulder at me. "So we're keeping Lara. If you take issue with that, I'm sure you're not the _only_ person in Australia who can call the Rainbow Serpent and flatten the earth."

Amanda threw off Natla's hand. " _You_ clean her up, then," she said. "It'll give you a great excuse to sexually harass her. And you can prepare for your own fucking ritual."

Natla watched her march off, concealing from me whatever reaction she had to Amanda's outburst. She looked back at me for a moment with a very curious expression.

Don't you touch me, I thought, don't you lay a single finger on me. I may be Amanda's slave, but I bet Amanda wouldn't mind if I attacked you.

She didn't, though. She just flagged down a couple of the mercenaries. "Listen to me," she said, "Clean her up, fix her hair and put her in one of those robes I laid out. Don't injure her, and don't let her injure herself."

The men both turned to me. I took one look at them and sprinted in the other direction. I could hear Natla laughing as I fled. I didn't get very far, unfortunately, because my leg muscles were literally jelly and my knees kept locking. They easily caught up to me and pinned me down, log-carrying me up to one of the rooms while I struggled as violently as I could.

Inside, they dumped me into one of the showers, still wearing my boots and trousers, and turned the detachable showerhead on me until the water ran clear. I was so wet already I hardly cared.

Afterwards, they spent quite a long time trying and failing to wrestle me out of my remaining clothes. I didn't realised until after I'd broken one of their arms – which didn't slow him at all in his attempts to follow orders, mind you – that there was a fourth person quietly watching all of this from the far side of the cabin.

"Amanda," I said bitterly, and then I tried to insult her but nothing came out of my mouth. I made a face; I kept forgetting I was her slave. While I was looking over at her, one of the men got too close to my legs so I kneed him in the face until blood poured out of his nose and all over my trousers.

Amanda watched him bleed all over me. "This is stupid," she grumbled. "Listen to me, men: leave."

They dropped me on the ground and immediately exited.

I lay on the old carpet for a moment, breathing heavily. She wandered over to me and looked down at me lying on my back. She didn't try to help me up, though; I suppose after brutally beating her it wasn't a kindness I could realistically expect.

"You can stop glaring at me," she said eventually, turning away. "I don't care what you say to me. Just don't mouth off to Natla and piss her off."

I had to stand up by myself, despite how exhausted I was. I braced myself on a nearby chair to do it. She watched my progress. When I was finally up, some sort of emotion passed over her face. "Did she die?"

 _Sam_ , I thought, hoping desperately that what I was going to say was still true. "No," I breathed. "Not yet."

Amanda nodded, but hid her reaction from me. She just stood in the centre of the room, staring at the robes that had been hung up on the outside of a wardrobe. They were beautiful, that much I had to acknowledge. I'd seen them before, when Natla had captured me and taken me to the ruins of Atlantis. The red velvet looked so soft.

Amanda wasn't admiring them, though. There was no appreciation on her face whatsoever. I thought about what I'd heard Natla say to her. I just hated her so very much that it was odd that we shared an objective, even if the reasons we shared it were different. "You don't want to resurrect Atlantis."

She took a deep breath. "No," she confirmed.

"You want to have just two people operating the Scion and then use the Slave Stone instead of the third person to make vast armies instead and take over the world that way."

She glanced back at me with an eyebrow up. Her tone mocked me. "There's nothing wrong with your hearing, apparently."

"Why, Amanda? You don't seem like the kind of person who wants to rule over the whole—"

She scoffed, interrupting me. "Sorry," she said dryly. "I'll work on being more of a stereotype." She turned away from the robes, looking at me. Her pale skin still had such awful bruises from when I'd beaten her. Ironically, there was a shade of blue under the bruise in her black eye that actually matched it. "You ruined everything," she said. "You don't even know how fucked up everything is now because of you. I had everything under control. I knew exactly what I was going to do."

"Gee, I'm so sorry I foiled your grand plans for world domination."

She shook her head wearily at me. "Stand up straight," she said, instead of remarking on what I'd said.

I couldn't do anything but obey her. She took a couple of steps toward me, her eyes on my torso. Initially, she had looked quite tired and quite angry, but the more time she spent examining my skin, the more relaxed she became. I recognised that transformation: she loved archaeology as much as I did and she was examining things that really interested and excited her. I knew that feeling so well. It was very uncomfortable sharing any sort of kinship with her.

"Do you know what they are?" I asked, wondering if she'd tell me.

She knelt down in front of me, her fingertips tracing over the designs on my skin. As she touched them, they glowed. "Some of them," she said eventually. Almost like pointing out constellations in the sky, she showed me with her fingertips. "These are crocodile spirits," she said, forgetting who we were and what was happening around us. "And these are _Gwion Gwion_ … Peg, Sash…." She sat back a little. "All of these figures here, with the wide open eyes and no mouths, they're _wondjina,_ " she said. She sounded like Blanket when she said those words. "Rain and storm spirits. Every year the _Mowunjum_ people travel to all the caves to repaint them. It's supposed to ensure the rains come. It's said that if you make a mistake and paint them with a mouth, then floods will pour forth and destroy—" She had actually been smiling as she spoke, but when she glanced up at me, recognition passed over her face and the smile dimmed. "Forget it," she said sullenly, all of the delight fading from her voice as she stood up. "You probably don't care anyway. You probably just thought the spirits would give you _magic powers_ or something that would look great on TV. Hope you had your reality check already."

"I didn't want Diane Frost to make any more of those Slave Stones," I corrected her, insulted at how shallow she thought I was. "So I took the spirits so she couldn't. I didn't want any of this."

Amanda considered my response. "You should have just killed her and left the spirits alone," she said.

I thought about the horrible violent feelings I had when I was around Diane. "Believe me, I wanted to." I hadn't actually been intending on saying anything more to that, but some part of me must have known that Amanda would have wanted me to tell her. When my mouth spoke again, I wasn't certain I disagreed with its decision to tell her what I knew. She wanted to stop the ritual as much as I did, after all. And I could worry about dealing with Amanda later, after we'd stopped Natla from resurrecting Atlantis. I'd beaten Amanda before, the scar and bruises on her face proved that.

I took a breath. "Actually, you were wrong about Natla destroying _everyone's_ lives."

Amanda looked guarded. "What makes you so sure?"

"Natla was trying to poach Diane Frost five years ago. I found a book on Australian History with a note inside from Natla." Amanda crossed her arms as I continued, cautiously listening. "But somehow Natla lost interest." She didn't look convinced; she was as sceptical as I was about the idea of Natla losing interest in someone. "That, or Diane found a way to get Natla to leave her alone."

Amanda was trying her best to look perfectly neutral. "She did?"

"I don't know much about it. But did you ever actually meet Diane?" Amanda shook her head. "When you meet her, you get this… awful feeling. Like being split in two and watching half of you brutally murdering her while the other half is just standing there in place."

Amanda's eyes narrowed. "That's a radiating curse," she said, echoing something I'd heard Sam say she'd read in the book. "Or an 'infectious curse', I think is the literal translation of the Aboriginal term. You inflict it on one person in a mob and pretty soon everyone is fucked." She was thinking. "And you say Diane Frost had one of these, and you think Natla left her alone because of it."

"It must be something to do with it, it must be. But how did she even curse herself and how did she know?"

Amanda shook her head. "It's not hard to upset the spirits," she said. "Some of them you just put the wrong foot first into a cave and your whole family's dead. Maybe it was a lucky accident." I wasn't sure if she actually believed that, though, because her sullenness had turned into thoughtfulness.

I remembered that sacred design I'd copied in Wollemi and the awful rainstorm it had caused in Sydney as a result. Amanda certainly wasn't kidding when she said it was easy to anger the spirits. No wonder Aboriginal Elders had to gather wisdom their whole lives in order to know how to speak to them.

Amanda walked up to the hanging robes and unceremoniously took one off its hanger and threw it to me like it was dirty laundry. "Put this on," she instructed.

I had to do as she said. While stepping into the robe, leaving my wet trousers on, I said, "Why are we doing this if you don't want to help her rebuild Atlantis? Why aren't we trying to stop her?"

Amanda was examining her own robe. "Because you wrecked what I was _going_ to do," she said, and there was venom in her voice. "It doesn't even matter now. We might as well go ahead with it. There are more options open to us as gods, anyway." When she took her top off I was able to get a good look at the spirits on her skin for the first time. I was distracted by how thin she was, though. She was _tiny, and h_ er skin was just so pale with was almost transparent. It was also littered with bruises. I might have had something to do with those.

"What were you going to do before I 'wrecked it'?" I asked her, running my eyes over all the glowing spirits on her torso. "You might as well tell me, it's not as if I can stop you now."

She stopped in the middle of trying to pull it over her head to sigh at me. "Lara, you're a fucking open book to her. She can just _read_ you. I can't tell you anything because somehow she'll figure it out if I do."

After we'd dressed in the robes, Amanda led me down to the bow where Natla had assembled the group of engineers I'd seen on my first visit to Amanda's ship. From the look of things, they were relocating all the rigging, crates and other items out of the way so there was a big open space there. Natla was standing in the centre with a large bucket full of clear liquid in her hand as she supervised them, and she was wearing the same red dress I'd seen in Atlantis. She seemed completely impervious to the heavy rain and storm raging around her.

The engineers were chatting to each other – these men weren't Scion-forged clones. They were normal men.

Natla wandered over to us as we stood at the edge of the commotion, her wet dress still cascading in a perfect fan behind her. She looked both of us up and down and there was appreciation visible. "That's better," she said, reaching up and brushing some hair out of my face. I would have bit her hand if it was any closer to my mouth, but instead, I just turned roughly away and shook my hair back the way it had been.

She was amused. She was _always_ amused. "I hope you two had some valuable bonding time."

Amanda said it all for me. "Fuck you, Natla."

She laughed at that. "Oh, eternity with you two is going to be _very_ entertaining." She held out the bucket toward Amanda. "Would you like to help me paint the sigils?" She clearly knew what the answer would be. When Amanda just _glared_ at her, she smiled. "Pity. I always find the collection process rather distasteful, myself. Oh, and consequently?" She smiled at us over her shoulder as she turned back, holding the bucket up. "This is thickened oil. There'll be no washing it off, whether that's by the rain or someone deliberately trying to clean or smudge it."

As she walked away, I said quietly to Amanda. "I hope _you_ have a plan."

She just looked sharply at me. "So you can screw that one up, as well?" Then, she walked off to the other side of the deck, I think for the sole purpose of not standing near me. It felt like something that someone would have done in grade school, and it made my temper flare. _Fine_ , I thought angrily at her. _Don't_ help me figure out what the hell I'm going to do here.

After the deck had been cleared, Natla lined all the men up. They were just standing there, idly talking to each other while Natla had a quiet word with one of the mercenaries. In a matter of twenty or thirty seconds, a whole swarm of the armed men rushed up onto the bow and restrained the engineers all in a row. The way they were holding them, with fingers in their hair exposing their necks, it reminded me of a slaughterhouse.

I didn't see Natla take the carving knife out of her robe, but the blade glinted in the lightening as she approached the men.

Some of them shouted, or struggled, or cried, but she was oblivious to it. Holding the bucket out to the first one, she slit his throat with one clean, practised motion. Blooding _poured_ out of the gaping wound and she caught it in her bucket. When there was little more to be collected from the first man and he was lolling motionless in the mercenary's arms, she moved to the next one.

I watched the men beg for their lives, talking about their partners, their children, their families. She bled them mechanically like they were no more than stuck pigs, not even engaging with them as she did so. It was inhumane. They were nothing more than ingredients for Atlantis to her.

We all were.

She only stopped when the men were lifeless and empty on the bow, and then she ordered them carried away. I watched their bodies be carted past, one by one. God, that could just as easily have been Sam. Or Min, or Bree, or any of us, really. None of those men had done anything wrong except answer the wrong job advertisement.

"Don't pretend you've never seen blood, Lara, Yamatai would have been full of it," Natla called to me. "Not to mention events since then."

I _had_ seen lots of blood. I'd swum in it and had it splashed all over me. I'd blown it out of some people and desperately tried to keep it in others. What I'd never done is line up a group of innocent men and butchered them. It wasn't the same. "You should have used the mercenaries," I said, thinking she probably couldn't hear me.

I was wrong. "You have to use _real_ blood and _real_ people for these rituals, Lara," she said, putting a thin-headed mop into the huge bucket and stirring the contents. "In Atlantis it was a great honour to have your blood used in ceremonies. Men and women would willingly open their throats for the privilege." The romance with which she spoke about people killing themselves was sickening.

When she began painting the sigils on the bow with the mop, I did move a little closer to watch, hoping I would figure something out. There _had_ to be a way to stop her. Diane had managed to figure it out, so I should be able to, as well. Through all this cottonwool in my brain, I had to try and _think_.

Some of the symbols I recognised from my time in Atlantis, others I didn't. The whole motif was incredibly complex and she was carefully painting it from top to bottom so her dress didn't smear it. The thick oil mixed with the blood was like a paste, and when I accidentally trod in some, I slipped in it and landed heavily on the deck.

As I sat up, I noticed the knife Natla had used to bleed the men on the ground near the railing, still covered in blood. I leaned over and grabbed it, tucking it inside my robes.

When Natla was done, she carefully walked around the twenty-foot design and carefully inspected her work. A slight smile was all that indicated her appraisal of it. "Come," she said releasing the train on her robe and discarding it as she walked into the centre of the design.

Amanda shook her head tiredly and approached Natla, motioning for me to do the same.

Some of the oil on the edges of each motif was running in the rain and leaving faint rainbows across the whole deck. It also made the deck _very_ slippery and I had to be careful not to fall over again.

Natla took the Scion from her pocket and spilt those dazzling lights over the whole side of the ship. As soon as the lights touched the motif, each of the patterns glowed a rich, deep red like the colour or our robes.

Before Natla put the Scion in the centre of the sigils, she paused for a moment. "You will find in time, Amanda, that your decision to be part of this ritual – however reluctantly – was the best decision you ever made," Natla assured her. "I know you still have some sentimental attachment to the current configuration of nations. You are only mortal, so I can't really say that surprises me. You will find that a unified empire is a much more equitable, efficient society, though." It was still surprising how wistfully she spoke of a nation than had fallen some twenty-five thousand years ago. "And in time, you will thank me for insisting. Everyone will."

Everyone who's left, I thought. Everyone who you haven't maimed, killed or destroyed. I felt the shape of my knife in my pocket.

As if sensing that I was doing – because it was on the far side of her and she couldn't possibly have seen it – Natla turned to me. "May I remind you that should you have any latent desire to kill me, you can't. Only a god can kill a god."

I wasn't sure whether or not to believe her, so I looked to Amanda. From the resignation on Amanda's face, Amanda _did_ believe her.

Well, _I_ wasn't going to give up that easily. There just had to be a way. I looked down my front at the sleeveless, low-draping robes and the spirits glowing around and underneath of them. If Diane could figure out how to anger them, so could I.

I peeked back over my shoulder at the bucket, thinking that perhaps I could copy some of the angry rain spirits Amanda had pointed out on me. They hadn't liked that in Sydney. The problem was, I couldn't very well dash over there and quickly try and paint them – not only could I not really run, I'd slip and fall and Natla would stop me before I'd even made it to the bucket.

Natla placed the Scion in the centre of the three of us, suspended in the air. I couldn't look at it without it casting bright echoes on my retinas. Holding her arms out to us, Natla smiled indulgently. "I've waited so long for this," she said. "Link arms with me and with each other."

Amanda grudgingly did so. I didn't straight away, though, I just stared at Natla, imagining that plunging the knife into _her_ neck would achieve anything other than making me feel marginally better. "Link arms with Natla, Lara," Amanda ordered me. "It doesn't even matter now."

I couldn't disobey her.

When we were all clasping each other's forearms, the sigils shone even brighter. Natla began chanting in that language I'd heard Qualopec and Tihocan use in my dreams; lilting, song-like tones that had a certain beauty in their rhythms.

I felt something inside me, something warm. When I looked over at Amanda, there was a faint light coming out of her mouth and eyes, like someone had lit a fire in her chest.

I was running out of time, I had to do something _now_.

Spirits, spirits, I thought, trying strain to remember anything Old Johnson had said, or Blanket had said, or anything anyone had every told me about them. Min had said some things, too, but I couldn't remember any of the details. There had to be something really offensive I could do to them which would curse me and curse everyone around me.

While I was trying to imagine what that could be, I remembered tearing that sacred design in half and being doused with water. If that was just a _copy_ and it angered the spirits…

Oh, God. _God_! I had an idea.

Natla had her head up to the sky, chanting. She wasn't watching me, just holding my arm. I tried, but I couldn't let go of her. Amanda had told me to link arms with her.

She'd told me to link arms _with Natla_.

I very carefully released Amanda's arm, instead, watching her carefully. She opened her eyes, and there was a dull glow coming from them. It made it hard to see her expression. She didn't stop me though, not even when I reached into my pocket and took out the knife.

I looked down at the blade, and then at the low neckline on my dress. On the arm that was linked with Natla, I could see one of those wide-eyed rain spirits Amanda had pointed out to me before. _It's said if you make a mistake and paint them with a mouth_ ,' she'd said, and then something about floods and destruction. Well, what if I _deliberately_ gave them a mouth?

Taking a breath, I plunged the knife into my arm, right where a mouth would be on the _wondjina_. I'm sure it hurt, but I never felt it because there was a surge of light in front of me and then suddenly I was lying dazed near the barrier rail of the ship with _no_ idea what was going on.

Amanda and Natla had both been thrown out of the motif, too, and for some reason all the symbols had started to catch on fire.

When a deep rumbling cracked through the air and shook the whole ship, I realised what had happened: the Scion had been struck by lightning.

The muscles in my hand had clenched around the knife when I'd been knocked back, and since I had it, I used it to cut the fabric of the dress off me. Underneath, my torso was bare between my sports bra and my trousers. I stared at the spirits milling around on my skin. I had to do this.

I didn't stop at the _wondjina_. I cut through every spirit that would stay still enough for it; until my whole torso throbbed and burnt from the cuts. I hadn't needed to go very deep to upset them, but it was still my skin, and it still _hurt._

While I was lying there, trying to figure out how I was going to stay conscious enough to stand up and go look for the Scion, a figure in a dress crouched over me, a silhouette against the smouldering motif. The whole deck smelt like cooking bodies, blood and smoke.

"Stop listening," that was Amanda's voice, and the result was immediate. "Stop listening to me. I need you to do something and it might involve inadvertently hurting me," she said. "Which you can't do if you're my slave. Just distract Natla, okay? Go somewhere safe and let the spirits do whatever they want. They'll be after her, anyway, regardless of who defiled them."

I couldn't see her properly, but at least her eyes and mouth weren't lit up anymore. "What? There's nowhere safe on this ship and I can't very well jump off it!"

"Are you fucking stupid?" she hissed. "Not _literally_ , in your fucking head. The Dreaming isn't _here_. Open up and check the fuck out and let them do whatever they want."

I just wasn't following her. "Open up? I don't—"

She sounded really frustrated. "Goddamn it, Lara, it had to be _you_ didn't it? No wonder you have no idea how to speak to them yet. You're the world's most uptight control-freak!" She swore profusely. "Didn't you do yoga? Don't they teach you to be Zen or something in that? Just fucking do it or I swear to God I will knock you out and see if _that_ works."

"Okay, okay!" I said, getting the gist of what she was saying and not liking any of it. "I'll try, alright? I'll _try!_ "

She crawled off somewhere, and I could hear Natla shouting something at her. I closed my eyes, trying to remember how I'd seen Amanda summon the Bunyip. My skin felt seared by all the cuts and there was rain absolutely hammering the deck around me, but I tried to ignore it.

I had actually expected to not succeed. I didn't really understand what she was asking, and I kept nearly falling asleep and then panicking that I would be completely vulnerable if I accidentally did. Anyone could do anything to me like that. After a few failed attempts in which I'd wake up and panic, it occurred to me that that was exactly what she meant by 'letting go'. Accepting that I was going to put myself in a position where anyone could do anything to me.

After so much fighting and so much struggling and _never, never, never, never_ giving up, it was horribly unpleasant feeling just letting myself sink back into the deck. My skin was exposed, my neck was exposed and that knife was a short distance away from me. And I was just going to sleep in the middle of it all.

I have to admit, there was peace in surrendering to it. Not caring about what was happening around me and just relaxing. Not feeling responsible for it, just accepting it. I closed my eyes.

I don't remember what happened at first. I must have stood up, I must have looked around me. When I came to, I wasn't… me. I was, and I wasn't. I had that strange sensation that there were two of me, the same feeling I'd had when I'd wanted to murder Diane and periodically ever since the spirits had started to manifest.

The same rain was falling around me, the same fire was burning on the deck and both Natla and Amanda were before me, but everything was different. Everything was _alive_ and an extension of me, and none of it felt tangible or real. It was like someone had put a silk screen over the whole world and I was looking through it.

"You _fools_!" Natla was shouting as she threw fireballs towards Amanda and they were swallowed by the Bunyip. "You're just wasting time! We all know you can't kill me. Stop this ridiculous rebellion and _use your_ head."

When she spotted me, she wound up to throw a fireball. I raised my hand and the ship swung wildly up to one side, a colossal wave breaking over the edge of it and washing across the deck. It spread the oil fire across the whole bow and it began to catch onto the piles of crates and other items moved to the side for the ritual. Natla was knocked completely over, and when she stood up, she did _not_ look happy.

"Good thing I don't need to actually stand on anything," she said, and the massive wings sprouted from her back. In the wind, though, she could hardly stay in the air. To make matters worse for her, a violent electrical storm and positioned itself directly above the ship bolts were streaking the air. This must have been how Himiko felt, I thought, feeling it each time the lightening lunged at Natla.

I don't know if the spirits and the storm would have killed Natla – I doubt it – but she was certainly having some serious trouble with them. The rain and the storm were one thing, but every time a wave broke on the side of the ship and washed over the deck, crocodiles and turtles snapped at her feet until they melted into water and watched down the other side of the ship.

No wonder she'd wanted to avoid Diane.

While I was enjoying the show, I forgot that I was _me_. Natla had been moving around the deck and whenever she got close to the place 'I' was standing, I washed her away. But I forgot there was more than one me until I jolted back to reality suddenly with someone's firm hand clenched around my neck.

I was still lying on the deck where I'd left myself, and my cut skin was _burning_ with how much it hurt. I could barely concentrate. I coughed.

"You've got a lot to learn, child," Natla said, straddling my hips. "Your ambition and persistence are _wasted_ in this world. You would make a fabulous queen. Why can't you just accept that?"

"Because I'm _not_ wasted here," I hissed firmly through my narrow throat, thinking of Sam. "Not at all."

She sat back, exhaling at length and shaking her head in some semblance of defeat. "I was sure you weren't going to be like the others," she said. "I was sure of it. But you and Amanda are apparently another set of mortals who aren't not strong enough to accept the burden of ruling a great empire. It's such a shame. I had high hopes for both of you that it would work, this time."

Amanda. Where was she?

"You won't win, Natla," I said with conviction.

She laughed. "Haven't you realised yet that you can't kill me? If you fight enough battles where you can't die, eventually you will win." She sobered. "Anyway, _this_ battle is lost for you. My deepest condolences to Samantha. She'll miss you greatly – if she's still alive."

Natla raised her hand. I flinched and struggled, expecting at any moment to feel my skin burning from one of her fireballs, but it never happened. It was as if she was suddenly frozen in place.

When I opened my eyes, Amanda was standing over us, a glove on her hand, pressing something into Natla's open palm. Natla's face was stuck in abject surprise; she couldn't move.

In Natla's palm was the Slave Stone.

Amanda's face contorted with emotion. "That's right, Natla," she said. "You have no idea how long I searched for a way to kill you before I realised that it was all hopeless. You were right: a mortal can't kill a god."

Natla couldn't display any reaction to that, she couldn't move at all.

Amanda waited for one, anyway. Or maybe she was just trying to gather her thoughts together. Whatever the cause, she didn't speak straight away."There's _nothing_ I can say to you. You took everything from me. _Everything_ , and you left _nothing_. I have _nothing,_ Natla, nothing except myself." She leant closer to her. "The biggest fucking insult is that you actually thought I'd give _that_ to you as well. You actually thought I'd turn on a pinhead after what you did to my father, just because you promised me immortality." She scoffed. "There's a reason it's been twenty-five thousand years and you still haven't managed to resurrect Atlantis. Having some people under your thumb gives you the wrong impression that you can control _all_ of us."

Pinned under Natla, I could do anything except watch the scene unfold.

"It's over," Amanda said, her voice breaking as she spoke. "For taking my father from me. For everything you did to him, and to everyone else. Listen to me, Natla, Listen to me." She could hardly say it. "Kill yourself."


	42. Chapter 42

I'd spent the last five days in a complete daze. It was all a blur, filled with tears and worry and debilitating exhaustion. I could hardly remember any of it. But in that moment, where Amanda ordered Natla to kill herself, everything fell into place. Suddenly Amanda made sense, suddenly it _all_ made sense.

Natla was still frozen with her hand on the stone and I was still trapped underneath her, my stomach wet with my own blood. Amanda looked like she was about to explode and I could only stare up at her. "You planned this all along," I murmured.

"Do it," Amanda ordered Natla through grit teeth, ignoring me. "Do it! Now!"

Natla relaxed from the stone, taking a handful of her gown and standing up from me. Her face was vacant of any expression as she walked a safe distance away from us.

She stood there for a moment and I sat up weakly on my elbows to watch her. My heart was going a hundred miles an hour. Any second now, I thought, any second she's going to start laughing and then incinerate us. I wondered if Amanda could summon the Bunyip fast enough to save us, or even if she _would_ save me.

Natla _smiled._

My chest clenched and I involuntary curled forward to protect myself just in case.

"You fool, Lara," she began. "You think you've _won_?" She did laugh, full-throatedly. "You may have found a loophole to defeat me, but who wins in the end, Lara? Your precious Sam is going to die before she gets medical attention. She might even be dead right now, and there's _nothing_ you can do about that, regardless of what you do to me." She tilted her head, still wearing that predatory smile."I bet she died all alone, begging for you to save her. And you didn't, Lara. You didn't save her."

That image... God, I couldn't... No… No! I could. I _could_. "I will save her," I vowed. "I will go back to her, and I'll make sure she'll be okay."

"We shall see," she said knowingly. "We shall see who's-"

Amanda interrupted her. " _Now_ , Natla! No more talking, just fucking do it! Just fucking destroy yourself!"

Natla closed her mouth and pressed her lips together. She had an odd expression; it looked like the sort of face someone would pull if they were trying and failing to lift something really heavy. I remembered what it had been like to try and fight the compulsions inside myself. She was trying to fight it, and she wasn't succeeding.

Please work, I thought to myself as I shivered. Please, please work…

Natla held up a hand and a fireball spun in the palm of it; I could feel the heat from all the way back where I was lying. She swallowed, watching with deep concentration as her hand slowly rose to her chest.

There was a moment when time seemed to stop and I wasn't sure what was going to happen; and then the fire caught on her robe. It was the same ethereal fire as from Atlantis, from Egypt and from the dreams I'd had about the Triumvirate. It spread across her robe like she had been doused in lighter fluid, and it tore hungrily up the fabric. When it touched her skin she didn't give us the satisfaction of hearing her scream; she just collapsed on the deck in a smoldering heap as the flames chewed through her. Her skin was gone before the robes were; for a moment there was just a skull with flames spilling out of the eye-sockets and mouth and then there was nothing except a burning pile of robes and ash. The fabric continued to burn even after there was nothing left of it. It was just like when I'd watched Tihocan burn, except she had no Qualopec to comfort her and bid her farewell.

I stared the fire with my mouth open. I could hardly breathe and the air smelt like charred flesh.

Beside me, Amanda had been taking a few halting steps towards the flames, peering into the ashes just to make completely certain there was nothing left at all.

For few seconds it was completely silent except for the dying wind and the rain.

Then, Amanda collapsed to her hands and knees on the deck and _wailed._ It came from deep inside her chest and the back of her throat and it was so _raw_.I'd almost never heard a sound like it, it chilled me to my bones. There was just so much despair and so much anguish that even just listening to it was painful.

"Ten years!" she screamed at the burning corpse. I could see her shaking. " _Ten years of my life and everything. Everything!_ "

With some difficulty I stood up, moving closer to her. I kept checking the pile of ashes again and again, just to make sure that Natla really wasn't there and that there was nothing left. She was gone; all that was left was slow- burning coals on the deck, surrounded by smouldering debris and fading rain.

I looked around us; and for the first time I realised the ship was tilted rather steeply to starboard. I didn't know why or how that had happened, but that was a _bad_ sign. Additionally, there were still fires burning in various places and some of the rigging and equipment had snapped off with the waves.

Underneath me, the deck _creaked._

 _Shit_!

"Amanda!" I said, bending stiffly down to try and help her up. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry! We have to go, the ship is going to sink!"

"Don't touch me!" She hissed and pushed me violently away from her. She stood up anyway, though, looking about us. As she did so, there was a deep groan from centre of the ship and the sharp crack of wood splitting. Several boards flew over our head, and we spun around to look at where they'd come from.

The ship was going to split in half, and _soon._

"How ironic," Amanda said, sounding so completely exhausted. "I finally managed to kill her, and now we're going to die anyway." She sighed as she glanced over her shoulder at me. "And I guess Sam won't be saving you this time."

I think she was being dark rather than cruel, but I could have _punched_ her again, anyway. I didn't, though, because over her shoulder I spotted something past the cargo holds. "Wait!" I said, half-jogging, half-running towards the railing so I could get a better look.

At the stern of the ship, the helicopter was still on the helipad, despite the tilt of the deck. "There!" I said, pointing at it, "Come on!"

I couldn't run properly, but I tried to anyway. Amanda wasn't faring much better than I was; she was still wearing that long dress and at some point she'd hurt one of her legs and jogging with a very pronounced limp. Regardless of our injuries, the ship _was_ going to split, and it wasn't going to let up just because we couldn't run very fast. "Faster!" I shouted back at Amanda, struggling with my own muscles. "Run faster!"

As we approached the centre of the ship, literally the _second_ we were jumping over it, it _wrenched_ open wide, leaving a gaping hole under our feet as the bow fell apart from the stern. Sparking electrical cords, metal, fabric and cargo hung into the gap as I landed heavily on the other side of the deck. I turned to see if Amanda needed help beside me – because Sam would have – but she was already up, continuing toward the helicopter and ignoring whatever was wrong with her leg.

I nearly followed her, but as I was looking down underneath me, I saw a yellow suitcase with a big green cross on it slip into the chasm in the ship.

My heart caught in my throat: _medical supplies_. I knew that symbol anywhere. I stared down at it as it tumbled between the levels, thinking about what Natla had said to me. If Sam was going to wait any longer for an ambulance, I just _had_ to try and get those for her. That was a _big_ case; big enough to be insulated. It might even contain blood products.

"What are you waiting for?" Amanda yelled at me from further up the deck. "Let's go!"

"Hang on!" I said, pointing into the wreckage. "There's medical supplies down there!"

She looked at me like I was absolutely crazy. "No, Lara!" she said. "If she's going to die, she's going to die! What's the fucking point in _you_ dying as well?" I looked down at the yellow case several levels below, trying to gauge my chances at reaching it. "Lara, goddamn it!" Amanda yelled when it was clear I wasn't getting up. "Fine! Whatever, I'm going and you can come or not!"

I looked from Amanda to the medical supplies, and then decided it was a risk I was prepared to take. As fast as I could with my quivering arms and shaking legs, I lowered myself into the gap. There were electrical wires _everywhere_ , and I had to be just so careful not to touch them. I wasn't sure what the voltage was, but I didn't want to take any chances.

Just as I was reaching towards the yellow suitcase and my fingers had brushed over the handle, there was an almighty crack and whatever had still been joining the two halves at the bottom snapped. It then fell _directly towards me._ I screamed and my mouth _filled_ with water.

It was like Yamatai; I was swirling in a vortex of salt water, there was no light and no sound and no air. I was pushed along a corridor, my hands scraping along doors and walls and pipes as I tried to grip on to something, anything.

When I realised I wasn't going to be getting to an air-pocket any time soon, there was a moment were I panicked and all I thought about was Sam. Sam, lying there in that bed without me, wishing for me and never seeing me again.

I closed my eyes and tried to relax. My chest was burning and I was _desperate_ for air, but I just let go… and felt my fingers clasp onto the rough scales of a crocodile. As soon as I gripped it, I was powering upwards, through all the falling debris and cargo and up and up towards the surface and then finally, _finally_ I felt the rain and wind on my face and I took a deep lungful of air.

I bobbed there on the surface between huge waves, watching the ship sink slowly into the sea as I panted. While I was gaping at it, something shot up to the surface beside me like a cork. It was the yellow suitcase, and the fact that it floated meant that it was insulated. "Thank _god_!" I gasped, and grabbed a hold of it.

A bright light shone into my eyes and I heard the unmistakable sound of rotors as water sprayed into my face, blown from the surface. "You're insane," came Amanda's voice over the broadcast speakers. "And apparently, so am I. Get on the fucking ladder."

With a big smile spreading across my cheeks and the yellow suitcase under my arm, I reached out for the ladder as it hit the water. Slowly, painfully, I climbed all the way up it and pulled myself into the cabin, slide the door shut behind me and lying flat on the floor.

The helicopter tilted, powering up as it pulled away from the water.

I just lay there, taking huge gulps of air and hugging the medical supplies. We'd done it. We'd actually done it! Now I just needed rush back to Sam and get some of this stuff into her. I would have been quite happy to just lie there, and I might have, if not for that. I needed to check what was in the suitcase.

I heaved myself up, flipping it open and inspecting the contents. It was very cold inside, and there were blood products as well as a series of other bags, vials and the equipment needed to administer it all. Many of the packages I had no idea about, but I figured that the main thing was blood and hopefully that would buy us some time for the ambulance. I closed the case again before it got too warm, and pulled myself upright using the seats.

The door to the cockpit was shut; that didn't surprise me. I opened it.

Amanda was seated comfortably in the pilot's seat, still wearing that red dress. "You can fly a helicopter," I observed. And probably better that I could, by the look of it.

"Lucky for us." She didn't move. "Dad taught me."

Larson. "He taught me, too," I said, smiling as I remembered his no-nonsense instructions to me.

She looked across at me for a moment, and then back through the windshield. She didn't say anything.

I sat in the seat beside her, wincing as my cut stomach creased in the middle. I inspected my skin; some of the cuts were still bleeding a little, but I wasn't really worried about any of them except my shoulder and where I'd stabbed myself in the arm. The _wondjina_ I'd stabbed a mouth for was stuck there, looking like something out of Munch's _Scream_ , with clear fluid and some blood oozing out of the hole. I felt guilty. I hoped I hadn't actually hurt it.

Amanda was surreptitiously watching me as she steered us towards land. She'd been pressing her lips together and looking horribly uncomfortable before she finally said, "Thanks for your help." Her eyes ran up and down my cut torso. "I know it must have hurt to do that."

I looked down at my stomach. "Yes, well," I said shortly, "that might be a bit of an understatement." I couldn't look away from the screaming one. "I just can't wait to be back around Blanket so I don't need to stare at them anymore." Something occurred to me. "Why did you take Blanket?"

Her mouth tightened. "That doesn't matter anymore. I didn't need her, in the end."

"But you thought you were going to?"

She snarled at me. "No, I just kidnapped a little Aboriginal orphan for _fun,_ Lara. Because that's how I roll, isn't it? Because I'm an evil megalomaniac?" She took a settling breath. "It doesn't matter anyway. I didn't have to do what I thought I was going to have to."

She was too stung by that suggestion for there to be nothing to it, and she was too dismissive of what might have happened for it not to be terrible. "You were going to hurt her, weren't you?"

Amanda blinked slowly, but didn't say anything.

"Really? You'd hurt an innocent _little girl_?"

"To save the world from Natla? Yes."

I made a face. "I was going to apologise for messing up your plans, but if I saved Blanket then I'm not sorry I did."

She snorted. "I wonder how Sam and that Frost employee girl feel about your choice. Assuming they're both alive to weigh in on it."

Sam, I thought. God, I hoped she was alive, I hoped she was hanging on for me like she said she would. If Amanda had just told me earlier, I thought, so much of this could have been avoided. Maybe no one would have needed to get hurt at all. "If you'd told me earlier, maybe I could have stopped them from—"

"You're an open book, Lara," Amanda interrupted me. "Natla would have found some way to pick your brains. For a famous actress you suck at acting when it really counts."

Well, that much was true. I laughed bleakly. "There's the irony of being a famous actress," I said, and I had been about to say something about my main talent being my uncanny ability to get myself horribly into trouble, but then I remembered the leaked video and stopped laughing. At least now I could blame that on my 'stunt double'.

Well, that was all over now. Natla and all the awful monstrous things that she was capable of were gone forever.

Amanda's wailing, though. I gazed across at her, looking at her bruised and battered profile. If I thought I'd been through anything with Natla, then I hadn't been listening to those sounds Amanda had been making when she'd realised Natla was finally dead. And for Amanda to make them in front of _me_ …

I took a deep breath, wincing as the skin on my stomach moved. "Amanda," I said carefully, my tone sobering. "I heard what you said back there to her. I don't know exactly what happened to you, but if you need someone to talk to, then—"

"Are you fucking serious?" she asked, her voice shooting up an octave. When my eyebrows went up as well, she said, "I don't care how close you were to him, you still shot him." She shook her head. "And besides, I _hate_ self-righteous idiots like you. Just, no. I'll deal with it on my own."

Self-righteous? "I just thought that—"

"Just drop it," she said sharply, so I did.

Instead, craned my neck out the side window to watch the sinking ship. I couldn't see it, though; and there was a dark island far behind us. I hadn't flown over that before. "There's an island there," I told Amanda, confused.

Amanda glanced out the window. "Yeah," she said, like she was appalled by my ignorance and I just should have known. "Things that happen in the Dreaming shape the physical world."

Back at the house, I showed Amanda where to land the helicopter and had been expecting her to use it to leave, as well. She didn't, though, she helped me carry the medical supplies through the gentle wind and light rain into the house.

The police looked up when we came through the back door; I wasn't sure how long we were gone, but it must not have been as long as it felt. None of the police had even noticed I'd left. "Are you a paramedic?" Sergeant Grigg asked Amanda. She looked down at the soaked and torn red dress she was still wearing, and gave him a stare that he wouldn't soon forget. "Okay, forget I asked," he said as she helped me carry the medical supplies into Sam's bedroom.

There was another officer in there with her, and he was timing her pulse when I entered. He spotted the case. "Oh, thank god," he said. "Are they here? She's not doing so well."

I shook my head. "I got these out of the helicopter," I lied – convincingly, I thought – and then glanced up triumphantly at Amanda. I wasn't _that_ bad an actress. She rolled her eyes at me.

What mattered was that Sam _was_ still alive. Thank God, just, thank _anyone_ up there that was listening. I knelt beside her, checking down my front that the spirits were gone. "Sam?"

"Lara?" she murmured, turning her head towards me. He hand drifted over and touched my face, nearly getting me in the eye. I kissed it. "It hurts," she said in a tiny voice. "It just hurts. I can't do this. Please, please… I'm so thirsty. Lara…"

My heart ached for her. I could have fallen to pieces right then, listening to her pleading with me. I couldn't though. I just had to focus on all this medical rubbish. I switched out her old, empty oxygen bottle with the smaller one inside the kit, and unhooked the other two empty bags. I had _no_ idea which of the clear bags to give her so I chose whole blood, and the officer in the room with us helpfully pointed out that one of the vials had morphine in it. I had _no_ idea how much to give her, though, and so Amanda tried to Google it on the policeman's phone while I hooked Sam up to the blood and hoped it was the right thing to do.

"We should wait for trained medical staff," the policeman was saying, supervising Amanda's efforts on his phone. "We could cause more damage than we'll fix."

"I don't see trained staff around here, but I do see my best friend _dying,_ " I said as I grabbed the phone off Amanda, read the document and then used the calculator app to get the right dose. Fortunately, he didn't try to stop me.

In the end, I decided to go for half the recommended dose, just in case. Before I put it in the IV line, I crouched there with the syringe, trying to decide if I was doing the right thing or not.

Sam had been passively watching me the whole time, and her eyes… She trusted me so much. She was just gazing peacefully at me; she'd have let me do anything. I hoped I'd made the right decision. "I love you," I said to her, and stroked her cheek.

"I'm so glad you're here," she said quietly. "I'm just so glad you're back here with me."

Taking a deep breath, I pushed the syringe into the IV near her collarbone. Nothing happened for a few moments and then she jerked a little and her eyes fell gently shut. On the inside of her oxygen mask, I could see it fog periodically as she breathed. I sat there and watched it for a few minutes just to make sure she was okay, and then I kissed her forehead and stood out of the uncomfortable crouch I was in.

Amanda was hovering awkwardly by the doorway. In the red dress, she _did_ look odd. I wanted to talk to her – and I should definitely check on Bree and poor Min, especially with this morphine – but I was worried about leaving Sam.

The policeman watched me. "I'll tell you if anything changes with her," he said. "The second it does."

I wanted to stay with her, anyway, but she wasn't the only person who was hurt. I scrunched up my face. "Okay, thanks," I said to him.

As I was standing up, he noticed my stomach. "You need some attention yourself," he commented, his shaggy eyebrows way up. "And make sure someone gets a good photo of that before you bandage it. We'll need it for evidence. What a piece of bloody work that crazy woman is." He helped me lift the suitcase off the bed and close it again. "You go take this to that guy in the front room."

Guy in the front…? Oh, _Min_. I smiled at the policeman and didn't bother correcting him. Amanda wasn't helping me carry the case this time, and it was heavy. In the hallway, I stopped her. "Why did you come back with us?" I asked her, very frustrated she wasn't helping me anymore. "You could have flown off in the—"

"Blanket," she interrupted me, and kept walking to the front room. I surprised she cared at all what happened to the little girl if her original plan was to _kill_ her. "But if I go in there without you they're going to freak out."

I wasn't sure there would be a different outcome if _I_ went in there, but I didn't say so. I opted to just knock on the door first. "Who is it?" Bree's voice was wavering.

"It's actually me this time," I said carefully. "But I don't want you to open the door until you believe me. There's too much to say now, I'm sorry, I'm _so_ sorry. Natla's dead, Amanda killed her and she's here and I have morphine for Min."

It was a lot to take in, and Bree didn't say anything straight away, but I could hear her breathing on the other side of the door.

It was Min who spoke. "Okay," she said eventually, "Okay, come in."

I did go in, slowly. Bree looked so lost and so young. Her eyes were red from crying, and she was _frightened_ of me, I could see it in how she moved. She wasn't looking at me adoringly at her idol anymore.

I changed my mind about Amanda and Blanket. "I'm sorry," I told Amanda, who was back in the hallway. "I think it's best if you just stay here for now. I was enslaved last time I was here."

She didn't look happy about what I'd said, but she didn't try to argue with me.

I carried the suitcase into the room and put it on the bed under Blanket's feet. Min was still on the floor where she'd fallen, but someone had turned her onto her back and put a towel under her neck. She was so pale and that sheen of sweat was still on her forehead. At least she wasn't _screaming_ in pain, though. I clamped my eyes shut at the jarring memory of it.

"You were enslaved?" Min asked for clarification, having heard what I said to Amanda. I nodded. "I wasn't sure if it was _the_ Doppelganger, or another Doppelganger, or what."

"It was me, all of it," I said, not wanting to go into what that meant right now. I took out a fresh syringe and loading it up from the morphine bottle, showing it to her so she knew I was telling the truth about what it was.

She took a careful breath. "It wasn't _you_ ," she said. "And, I know that, but…" She was trembling. Bree sat cross-legged on the other side of Min and took her hand to steady her. There were tears in her big blue eyes.

I blinked slowly. There was nothing I could do about this; there was no way to make it right. "I don't know what I can say," I said as I found a vein and put the syringe in it.

"What's going to happen now?" Bree asked me quietly. "Is the ambulance even going to come? It's been _ages._ "

I didn't know, so I just shook my head.

After I'd given Min the shot, I stood and stretched my muscles. While I was doing that, I spotted the _Rip Curl_ top I'd taken out of the cupboard before that I'd not put on. Ignoring how much it hurt my cuts to do it, I just pulled it over my head.

The rain had eased up, and I could see the road from the front window. Most of the police cars were gone, and the two that remained were parked near the house in the driveway.

Would the ambulance even be able to see the house, even without the rain? I decided to go out the front again and just double-check.

Outside on the road, I squinted both ways up the highway – nothing. There was just nothing. Not a single car.

I looked back at the house. It wouldn't matter that you could see it from the highway if there was no one coming. There was just no one. God, what would happen to Sam? To Min? I looked down my front. I didn't think I was in danger of keeling over any time soon, but I needed medical attention, too. And Blanket hadn't woken up, either.

I stood there on the side of the road as the rain stopped, staring at the gravel.

We'd won, we'd killed Natla, but what happened to us all now? Was this the thanks the universe gave us, expiring slowly in a house on the side of an empty highway?

I looked up at the dusk sky as it stopped raining, and held out my hand to catch the last droplets.

As I did so, I noticed something glinting on the horizon. For a second, I thought it was a shooting star. My breath caught in my throat as I remembered the Aboriginal story I'd read: shooting stars meant someone was letting their family and loved ones know they'd made it safely to the spirit world.

Somewhere, there was a family watching the sky and waiting for that shooting star, so they could finally let go.

Sam, I thought, glancing back at the house and wondering if I should rush back in there.

When I looked back up again, though, I saw green and red. That wasn't a star, that was a _plane._

Further up on the highway, a sign that I hadn't paid much attention to started flashing. I couldn't read it from where I was standing, and I had been walking painfully over to it when I realised the plane was coming straight for the highway, and _fast._

I had this awful moment when I remembered the plane from Yamatai flying straight for me. My head pounded as I tried to stagger away from the road, almost feeling the dirt and hearing the debris crashing down all around me just has it had on the island. That didn't happen, though.

The plane just touched down gently on the road and I turned around, not sure what I was expecting to see. It was blue and white and I thought maybe there were more police inside, especially when several men and women in blue uniforms starting climbing quickly out of it.

"We're here!" someone called out to me, but I wasn't listening to them, I was reading the side of the plane. The text printed there brought tears to my eyes.

" _Royal Flying Doctor Service Critical Care Unit: Carrying Hope on the Horizon for 75 Years."_

It was finally over.


	43. Chapter 43

Someone was already saying something to me when I came to; I could hear machines beeping, my own breathing and the sound of an air-conditioning unit turned up high. When I was more awake and recognised the ceiling I was staring up at as that of the cabin of a plane, I realised what I thought was an air-conditioner was actually an engine. I had _no_ idea how I'd ended up in there or what was going on.

"Easy, easy," a man's voice was saying to me. I looked up at him, surprised, and saw a chirpy-looking paramedic with thick grey stubble. "Just relax, Lara. You're in a plane on your way to hospital."

Something was stuck to my face – an oxygen mask? – when I reflexively tried to reach up to remove it, something clinked and my wrists didn't move. I looked down at them, confused. I was handcuffed to the stretcher.

I panicked. As well as having _no_ idea what was going on and I didn't like being trapped. "I need to get out," I had said, and then I remembered why the plane had arrived in the first place. "Sam," I said. "Sam, where is she? Is she here? Is she okay?"

The paramedic was already loading up a syringe. I jerked away when he tried to put it into my arm, but without missing a beat he just loaded it into my IV, instead. I watched helplessly as it flowed through the transparent tube into my vein. "She's here, she's up the front with us," he said. He voice sounded firm and reassuring. "We can't let you out of those right now," he said, patting the handcuffs. "But we'll take them off when you're in hospital, okay?"

"You can't touch me!" I said, worrying about the thin latex gloves he was wearing as he went to adjust some of the leads on my abdomen. He didn't look at all alarmed by what I was saying and he wasn't listening to me, either. "No, be careful! No!"

Min must have been around somewhere, because I could hear her saying, "It's okay, Lara, Blanket's in here with us."

I didn't actually get to a point where I said, "Oh, that's alright, then," because I was already being pulled back into unconsciousness by whatever had been in the syringe.

When I woke up again, I was much more relaxed. I just lay there in the stretcher for a few minutes, listening to people chatting down near the cockpit of the plane. That was comforting. I was sure they wouldn't be so upbeat if something awful had happened; whether that was something I might have done while I was out of it or whether something had happened to Sam.

Slowly, I reoriented myself. I'd somehow ended up _in_ the plane as a patient. I couldn't actually remember anything about how that happened. Maybe that was for the best, because as I looked down my torso all I saw was skin and wires. Someone had cut off my bra, and my breasts were exposed. There were cardiac leads stuck all over me, and in between them all my cuts were swathed with antiseptic fluid and it _stank._

Min was parked in a stretcher right next to me, strapped to a spinal board with her neck in an immobilization collar. Unlike me, she was fully clothed, and she was also completely awake.

"I'm glad you can't turn your head," I said, looking at my naked chest.

"Funny, that wasn't what I was thinking," was her quick reply. She had too much of a smile in her voice for someone with a serious spinal injury. She must have realised I was looking oddly at her, because she held up something that looked like a green penny whistle. "Penthrox Inhaler," she said, holding it to her mouth and breathing deeply through it to demonstrate. "I feel _fantastic._ "

That made me smile. "Where's Bree?" I asked, thinking it was unusual to see them not together.

She raised her eyebrows. "Uh, with Amanda?" she said, as if I definitely should have known the answer to that. "Probably somewhere over central Queensland right now?"

"With _Amanda_?" I asked, thinking _that_ was an unlikely arrangement.

"You don't…" Min began, and automatically tried to turn her head towards me. She couldn't at all, the straps over her forehead were too tight. "Wow, you don't remember? Some serious drugs they put you on," she commented, and then filled me in. "When the paramedics told Bree she couldn't fit on the plane with us, you sat up in your stretcher, yanked all your tubes out and jumped out of the plane. Then you said, 'Now she'll fit' and went to walk back into the house. Then you kind of staggered and collapsed. The paramedics told the cops you might not be in a fit state of mind to make your own decisions, so they held you down and injected you with something. It took _four_ cops for them to get the needle into you."

Well, that sounded like me. "But she's not on the plane, is she?"

"Amanda offered to fly her up to Darwin in the chopper."

She _offered_? Amanda?

"I know," Min said. "Actually the most fucked up thing about that is that Bree _let_ her."

Well, it wasn't _that_ surprising, I decided, given the circumstances. "It if was me and Sam was leaving on a plane without me…" I said, thinking I'd probably have accepted the lift, too. That reminded me of Sam. I tried to look above my head towards where she was, but a combination of being restrained and being weak meant that I wasn't able to see her. "Did you hear anything about Sam?"

Min made a noise. "She was talking before and she sounded okay. Actually, she was asking about _you_."

I rattled the cuffs again. I desperately wanted to see her just to make sure she definitely was alright. I couldn't though, and the paramedics were obviously busy with her so I didn't want to disturb them. It was better I let them focus.

Instead, I looked across at Min. "What about you?"

Min took another breath from the whistle, and managed a slight shrug. "I don't think there's any mystery about what's wrong with me," she said. Despite the drugs, some of the smile was gone from her voice.

I almost didn't want to ask. "You can't feel anything? Anything at all?"

She didn't say answer straight away. "Nothing," she said, reminding me of what Amanda had said to Natla. "I even have to look down at my legs to know what position they're in." She sighed. "At least my flat's ground floor, I guess."

She wouldn't get a wheelchair around in that tiny little flat, I thought. You could hardly _walk_ around in it, and she didn't have the money to go anywhere else. God, what was she going to do? "Min…" I said, feeling around beside the stretcher for her other hand. I wouldn't have been able to reach her, but the clink of the handcuffs helped her figure out what was I doing. I felt her hand take mine; her thumb stroked my palm. Compared to hers, my hands were tiny. "I'll help you," I told her with conviction. "Whatever expenses you have, or things you need…"

She laughed once. "I don't want you to do that," she said, squeezing my hand. "Lara, I knew what I was doing when I did it. You were upfront about everything, and in the end, it was the fact I worked for Diane that got my back broken." She looked wistful. "It's funny; Bree always did say that place was killing me."

"But if it weren't for me, that you worked for Diane wouldn't have mattered to anyone. Especially not to Natla."

She smiled wryly. "I'm a big girl. I can make all of my own bad decisions. And besides," she squeezed my hand again. "It worked out in the end, didn't it?"

"If you can call this 'working out'," I said, thinking of her and of Sam. "Min, I—" I took a breath. "About when I was enslaved, I didn't mean to force you to—"

"—it's okay," she interrupted me. "I know." When I was about to continue, anyway, she talked over me again. "It was just creepy because I thought that you were your Doppelganger and I was certain you were about to shoot _me_ in the stomach, too. Don't worry about it. It's over." She took another puff from her Inhaler and smirked. "Plus, I made out with _Lara_ _Croft_."

I scoffed. "You sound like Bree," I told her. "I didn't you know cared about the whole _Lara Croft_ phenomenon."

She was smiling. "I don't. Just the person."

Whatever drugs they had me on didn't interfere one bit with my ability to _blush like wildfire._ She was _so_ charming. "I think you've had quite enough of that whistle," I told her. "Hand it over."

She did actually offer it to me, and I was curious about the type of analgesics that could make someone with a spinal cord injury feel so good they were capable of _flirting_. I was feeling sore and uncomfortable, myself, so I accepted it from her and copied the way she'd been breathing through it. That was the last thing I remember from the plane.

When I woke up, I wasn't in the plane anymore. I was in a hospital room and pale morning sunlight was filtering through some thin curtains. I reached my hands far above my head and yawned; it was _such_ a good feeling. I flopped my hands back next to me, a big smile growing across my face.

My head was clear. My muscles ached, but it was a healthy kind of ache, the kind you had the morning after you'd had a spectacular workout. My eyes stayed open of their own accord and I actually felt like I had some energy.

I felt _amazing_ , regardless of the state of my stomach. I'd never been so happy to wake up.

Beside me, machines slowly announced my pulse. I was alive, and I finally felt it.

"I could run the whole grass," that was Blanket's voice, and she was talking to someone. I must have been out for some time if she had woken up and was already that animated. "I bet I could do it without stopping. All of it."

I turned my head towards the sunlight. Blanket was standing on her tippy toes, pushing the curtain aside and peering out the window. Outside, the sky was a beautiful clear blue. Beside Blanket, Amanda was leaning against the wall, still in the tattered red dress. She had her arms crossed as she listened to little girl.

"Can I go outside on the grass?" Blanket asked her.

Amanda shook her head.

She little girl looked disappointed. "But I'm bored," she complained. "It's _really_ boring in here."

My throat rasped when I spoke, but eventually I managed to get some sound out of it. "Sorry," I told her. "I'll try to be more interesting, I promise."

Blanket twisted around towards me, and for just a second she looked really upset about the fact I'd spoken to her. Amanda noticed. "It's the real Lara," she told the girl. Blanket didn't look very convinced, though, and rushed over to Amanda, shrinking into her dress. Amanda put a hand on her little scruffy head and looked up at me. "Took you long enough," she said neutrally. "I've been here for eight hours."

Eight hours? No wonder I felt better. "No one's forcing you to stay," I pointed out.

She rolled her eyes at me. "You cursed yourself, idiot. Blanket has to stay around you, and someone's got to look after her until we can get her back to her grandfather and wake him up."

She did have a rather good point, and I very much doubted Bree or Min was going to be able to take care of her at the moment, and where was Sam?

There was an empty bed next to me.

"Sam…" I said, with a sinking feeling about that empty bed. "What happened to her?"

Amanda shrugged. "I don't know," she said. "I didn't ask."

"How could you not ask?" I said incredulously, sitting upright. The skin on my stomach _hurt,_ and when I pulled up my hospital gown – and then pushed it straight down again because I was only wearing knickers underneath it – I saw that my stomach was all dressed.

"Because I'm not sleeping with her," she said flatly. "There's no point, they wouldn't tell me anyway even if I did."

Unfortunately, as rudely as she'd expressed it, she was right. _I_ was her next of kin, which meant I needed to be the one to ask the questions. I looked over at my IV; it was almost empty anyway so I just peeled the tape from the back of my hand and pulled it out of my vein, leaving it dangling against the stand. I double-checked my hospital gown covered everything and then swung my legs out of the bed and very gingerly stepped down onto the linoleum. It was warm; actually, the whole room was warm and a bit muggy. If it was like that inside, I can't even imagine what it would be like outside the hospital.

My muscles and joints were stiff and the soles of my feet _ached_ , but I'd manage. When I got to the door I turned around and looked at Amanda. "You coming?" I asked.

She sighed and took Blanket's hand, leading her after us. She still had a limp which she was trying to hide.

As I approached the nurse's station, the nurse on duty stood up, looking concerned. "You should be in bed, Ms. Croft," she told me, and then looked around. "You're not supposed to leave your room."

"I'm fine, you won't need to sedate me again or anything," I told her. "Samantha Nishimura, where is she?"

The nurse came around the counter to try and usher me back down the corridor. "It's not that," she said. "The bloody press are here and we've done a pretty good job of keeping them out of the VIP wing so far, but sometimes they slip through the cracks." She looked down pointedly at a gap in my hospital gown. I hurriedly held it closed. "Your partner is still in surgery at the moment, but it shouldn't be too much longer. The surgeon will let you know how the surgery went afterwards."

I let her lead us away from the desk. "Is she alright, though? Will she be okay?"

The nurse remained strictly professional. "The surgeon will let you know," she said. "Can I get you anything in the mean time? You're not allowed any food yet, but perhaps your friends would like some lunch?" She looked at Amanda and Blanket. "We have roast chicken today."

Blanket suddenly paid a lot closer attention to the conversation. "Chicken!" she said. "Are there chips? They're my _favourite_!"

The nurse smiled. "I'm sure we can arrange some chips."

After she'd left us to continue the rest of the way back to our room, I noticed Amanda was scowling again. I raised an eyebrow at her and she shook her head. "'VIP floor'," she repeated mockingly, "'I'm sure we can arrange some chips'." She looked disgusted.

I couldn't be bothered dealing with her mood right now, so I ignored her.

We were on our way past a room and I spotted a mop of blond curls inside. _Bree!_ I thought, stopping by the door and taking a deep breath to call out to her. When I saw her expression, though, the words died on my lips and I just breathed out.

Amanda stopped a little ahead and was probably directing all manner of violent expressions at me. I didn't care, though, I was worried about what was going on inside the hospital room.

"Nothing?" Bree was asking Min, looking down the bed at her partner's midsection. "Where…?"

Min took Bree's hand and placed just below where her navel was, under the sheets. "From there," she said quietly.

Bree rubbed Min's flat belly. "You can't feel that?" she asked. Min shook her head and Bree looked _so_ upset. "That's awful," she said. "Are they sure it's permanent? Maybe you'll get better?"

Min just swallowed. "I'm sorry, Bree."

Bree sat down on the edge of Min's bed, still with her hand on Min's stomach. She was looking around at all the tubes and bags attached to Min, and then up at the monitor. "This is awful," Bree said eventually. "It can't be real. This can't be happening to you. You're too nice for this to happen to you."

Min's jaw was tight. "I'm sorry," she repeated. "I'm sorry, Bree."

Bree looked away from all the machines and swung her legs up onto the bed, trying to find some way to lie against Min's side. Min was wearing some sort of brace that restricted her movement, and it looked uncomfortable. There were tears in Bree's eyes as her fingers traced over all the straps wrapped tightly around Min's torso. "What does this mean?" she asked. "That you'll be in a wheelchair?"

"More than that," Min said, and I could see tears in her eyes, too. "Much more than that. Bree, I…" Her breathing was ragged, and I could see it draw sharp lines on my monitor. "Bree. You're _eighteen_. You have your whole life ahead of you. You should be going out into the world, all the places you always wanted to go. Japan, Egypt, Greece... You should be free to do all that." She could hardly continue, her throat was so tight. "I'll understand, Bree. I'll understand if you can't…"

Bree was watching her, her head on Min's shoulder.

"…If you don't want to spend the rest of your life caring for someone who can never do any of those wonderful things with you."

Bree looked mortified, sitting up a little so she could look more directly at her girlfriend. "Min," she said sternly. "Are you fucking kidding me? Really? I knew from the second I clicked through your dA gallery, that I had to try and find you in person. And when I met you? Min, I was _fourteen_ , and I knew then, I knew it. Even when you kept telling me to get lost, I still knew. I don't care if your face gets torn off by wild dogs or if you get chopped completely in half and don't have any legs at all. As long as you're you, you're my The One, and you're the only person I will ever want to spend my life with."

Min didn't move, she just closed her eyes and tears spilt down her cheeks. She wrapped her arm around Bree's back.

Bree lay her head back down against Min's shoulder. "It doesn't even matter if you can't walk. You're an artist. As long as you can see, you can still do all the things _you_ always wanted to do." She smiled faintly, looking wistful. "You're amazing. One day you're going to be famous and on some talkshow and I'm going to point to the TV and say to everyone, 'That's _my_ wife – isn't she _awesome_?'"

Min's lip was quivering. "Bree—" she said, hugging her tiny girlfriend tightly against her side so tightly her arm shook, as well. "What did I do to deserve you? _Fuck_ , I love you. I love you so much it _hurts_. _"_

When they started to kiss, I backed away from the door and wiped my own eyes. I was _so happy_ for them, they were such a beautiful couple. How could I _not_ want to help them, if I was able to? I pressed my lips together, thinking about what Min had said in the plane. I didn't care about her not wanting my money, I was going to find something I could do for her, I was.

Blanket didn't have long to wait for her lunch. When the nurse gave it to her, she climbed up on my bed and got stuck into the chicken with both hands, getting grease and peas _everywhere._ When she held up the carrots and made them talk to each other, I think Amanda's stormy expression might have momentarily broken. Amanda had been handed a plate as well, and she picked at the vegetables with no real interest. I wondered if she was a vegetarian.

The air near the window was warm, and the radiating heat from the glass was actually pleasant. I walked up to it, pushing the curtains aside and looking out.

There was a park beside the hospital, and the grass in it was thick and looked soft. I would have killed for that sort of grass in England; in summer we'd always dozed under the trees on such a patchy and thin lawn. The trees in Darwin didn't off as much shade as the ones in England, though: they were tall, skinny palm trees and they were surrounded by strangely-shaped tropical plants. All the foliage was the same rich green as the grass and sporting elaborate brightly coloured flowers. Enormous black cockatoos picked at them.

It was hard to believe this was the same country with the the dry orange sand in the Kimberley and the sugar-white beaches in Queensland.

I had been admiring the view, and as I result I haven't noticed that there were several telescopic lenses pointing directly at my window from the concourse below. I sighed; of course. After everything that had happened, I couldn't really expect much else. Sam would have smiled and waved at them, so I did, instead. I think it was the first time in my life I actually _smiled_ at the paparazzi. I wondered if just by doing that I'd paid off all their mortgages.

"Lara Croft?"

I turned away from the window; there was a man dressed in scrubs standing in the doorway. My heart started to pound. He'd obviously washed up, because he extended his hand towards me when I walked up to him. "Dr. Sunil," he said, smiling at me. "I was Samantha's surgeon."

Was? _Was?_ "Is she okay?" I asked, almost not wanting him to answer. I couldn't read his face.

"Well," he said, choosing his words carefully and nearly _killing_ me with suspense. "Given the delay to treatment we are pleased with her progress, and the surgery itself went well. The bullet shattered one of her lower ribs and everything went through her spleen and out the other side, by some miracle she _didn't_ bleed to death. I'm sure that's due in part to the multiple transfusions she received prior to arriving in hospital. Her inflammation markers are elevated, though, which puts her at risk for respiratory complications and other problems in the next week or two. She'll be in here for Christmas, I'm afraid."

"But she's okay?" I asked, not understanding everything he was telling me and not caring at all where we spent Christmas as long as I spent it with her. "She's going to be alright, isn't she?"

"This isn't the answer you want to hear, but we can never definitively say if someone will live or not," he said. "But she's stable at the moment and is responding very well to treatment. She's just been moved to recovery, actually. You can see her if you like."

"I can?" I said hopefully, and went to follow him.

Amanda sighed and collected Blanket who shouted, "But I haven't finished my chips! I want to finish!"

Amanda said in the same tone of voice she would use for an adult, "Well, you can't always have what you want." I expected Blanket to cause an enormous fuss about her lunch, but surprisingly she accepted Amanda's no-nonsense answer and obediently followed us. As we left the room, she cast one tragic glance over her shoulder towards her half-finished lunch and managed one exaggerated sniffle.

On the way to the recovery, Dr. Sunil gave Amanda a measured look. "I'm sure we could find you some scrubs to wear rather than that dress," he said. "It looks uncomfortable."

"Thanks, I'm fine," Amanda said, actually being polite to him.

He smiled anyway. "I'll have them delivered to Ms. Croft's room shortly," he said, and then held a door open for me. "I'm sorry, only Ms. Croft can come in here."

Amanda just sat down on the bench outside the area, and Blanket reluctantly sat beside her. "I want to go in, too," she mumbled, and then turned to Amanda. "Can I go in there with Lara?"

"Only if you're dying," I heard Amanda say boredly as the door closed behind me.

There room itself was _filled_ with machines, and there were a row of beds along the wall. Three of them were taken, and two nurses were having a discussion about the fact that one of the patient's monitors was playing a warning tone.

It wasn't Sam's, though. I recognised Sam immediately even under all the gauze and tubes and the nasal cannula. Her machines were quiet.

Dr. Sunil held his arm out toward her. "There you go, Ms. Croft," he said. "I'm sure she'll be happy to wake up to you." He promptly left.

I walked over to her bed; she was completely still, but could see her chest rising and falling steadily. She'd been breathing so quickly at the empty house, it was such a relief to see her finally looking relaxed. I took her hand and held it in mine. It was _warm_ again, and her fingers were back to being a healthy peach colour. I held them all against my cheek. She was alive.

She groaned and shifted in the bed, coughing a little. I may have smiled ear to ear. "Hey, there."

"Am I dead?" she asked weakly, voice hoarse. "I feel like I should just check before getting too excited."

"Do I look that good, do I?"

"When you smile," she murmured. "Yeah."

Sam opened her eyes properly and looked around us; back at the machines, across at the nurses and then out towards the door. I followed her gaze, not realising until now that there was a window out to the bench where Amanda was sitting. You could only see her head, but that white-blonde hair was unmistakable. Then, as if it wasn't obvious enough, Blanket stood on the bench and pressed her face against the window, making a blow-fish on the glass. I couldn't help but chuckle.

"Amanda's here," Sam commented, not laughing. I'd forgotten she didn't know about anything.

Where did I even start? I glanced over at the nurses to make sure they weren't listening, and then said quietly, "Amanda killed Natla with the Slave Stone. Also my Doppelganger got arrested for the murder of Sean Frost. If anyone asks, she's my 'stunt double'."

Sam just stared at me.

"Also, I'm cursed."

"You're _cursed,"_ Sam repeated flatly, and then sighed. "Of course you ended up cursed, you're _you._ Oh, my God…" She put a hand up to her face. "I was going to ask what I missed, but maybe I'll just leave it."

I laughed darkly. "It's a _long_ story," I said. "Maybe we should leave it for now. We still have to get Blanket back to Old Johnson back in…" Something occurred to me and the blood drained out of my face. "Oh, my God, Macca and Jammas!" I looked down at Sam. "Shit, I'll be right back, okay?"

Sam had her eyes narrowed at me. "Okay…" she said evenly, but there may have been some entertainment in her voice.

I rushed out of the room into the corridor, startling both Amanda and Blanket. "Macca and Jammas!" I said quickly. "My Doppelganger said that they were trapped in a 'bulb prison tree'? Does that even make any sense? I suppose we could call the police out there and…" Amanda had been sighing at me and looking completely unmoved by what I was saying. I misinterpreted it as not caring about Macca and Jammas' welfare. "They're you're _friends,_ " I scolded her. "Jammas is _completely_ into you. How can you _not_ care about them?"

She exhaled as if she was talking to a _complete_ idiot. "The 'Boab Prison Tree'," she corrected me. "And I called the police yesterday. Macca is meeting us in Fitzroy Crossing tomorrow."

I just gaped at her. "You called them already?" I repeated.

One of her eyebrows flickered. "Sorry, should I have waited to be rescued from my tower?" I glanced down at her long dress and she scowled at me. "No," she said. " _Don't_."

I didn't. I also felt a bit useless. "Well, thanks for doing that, I suppose," I said, feeling a bit lost.

She very sarcastically pretended to bow, and I wandered back into the recovery room while Blanket began, "Macca! Can I come and see Macca, too? Do you think he plays Pokémon?"

"What's up with you?" Sam asked as I stood next to the bed again. "You look angry."

"Not angry," I said, feeling odd. "Well, maybe at myself. I just feel a bit stupid."

Sam smirked. "Well, you do get hit in the head an awful lot, it was bound to happen eventually."

I narrowed my eyes at her playfully, I couldn't be _really_ angry. It was just too good to have her here and she was too good at making me laugh.

God, and I'd nearly lost her. How would I have felt carrying home an urn full of her ashes instead of holding this lovely warm hand? I wondered what it would have been like to never be able to chat to her, to never lie awake with her watching terrible reality telly until all hours. To never have her leave dishes in the sink or hear her singing the same verse from a song over and over in the shower until I was going absolutely mad. Just having a box full of grey dust to show for person who was my whole life: I couldn't imagine it, and I didn't want to.

Thank God I didn't need to try. She was still here.

"I like that look," Sam said, watching my face.

I glanced behind me at the nurses who were busy, and then grabbed a firm hold of the fitted sheets on the bed and pulled them toward me. The result was just want I'd wanted, Sam slid over to the side of the bed. I went around the bed and hopped up over the railing.

One of the nurses looked over. "Just watch the central line and all the cords," she said. "And the only reason I'm letting you do that is because my children are completely obsessed with your movie. If someone asks, I told you not to." She winked ever so slightly, and then turned away.

Sam was laughing very gently as I lay down beside her, putting my head on her shoulder the way she normally lay against _my_ side. I could hear her heart beating. It was such a perfect sound. I closed my eyes as I listened to it.

"I'm having serious déjà vu right now," Sam murmured into my hair.

"Yeah?"

"It's like Japan, isn't it? This is how it all started, only it's the other way around." She paused. "Also I'm going to have a _way_ cooler scar than you."

"Two scars," I said. "One on your back, too."

"Still cooler." I could hear the grin in her voice. "It almost makes up for missing out on all the action."

It was wonderful to hear her joking with me, but I still could get away from the fact that it had been _my_ gun in _my_ hand that shot her. "Maybe if I hadn't have been so tired, you wouldn't have had to—"

"Sweetie, are you even listening? I have _totally_ badass scar now and like the best story _ever_ behind it. No anecdote will ever beat this. I'm taking off my shirt at every party we go to."

"What's new?"

"Quiet," she said, pretending to be serious for a second. "Maybe I'll even go on tour. If only my camera wasn't destroyed, I bet it would have looked amazing…"

I don't know how long we lay there cuddling and chatting, but it must have been a while because eventually we got wheeled into another nearby room. It had an observation window like the first one, but the nurse just smiled at me and drew the curtain after Sam was hooked up to all the machines again.

While I was already dozing against Sam's shoulder, I heard someone creep inside. I opened an eye to see who it was in time to see Amanda tucking sleeping Blanket into the other bed, complete with her panda.

Amanda looked across at me and we made eye contact. She stood there for a moment – thinking what, I probably never know – and then she left.

I slept so well that night, even though it hadn't been that many hours since I'd woken up before. I didn't even care that the machines were beeping constantly and that the nurses would keep coming in to take printouts from Sam's monitor and write in her charts. At one point, someone even gave _me_ a couple of injections and took some blood.

In the morning, I woke up with another IV in my arm and no memory of how it had happened. I pulled it out, pressing against my vein and swinging my legs over the edge of the bed to stretch them. Blanket was watching me from the other bed while I yawned and stretched.

I smiled at her when I was done. "Good morning," I said. "Did you sleep well?"

She looked teary. "I didn't get to finish my chicken," she said forlornly, as if it was the worst possible thing that could ever have happened. "And I have to go home today."

I laughed – which she wasn't happy about, mind you – and hopped down off the bed.

Sam was echoing my yawn behind me, and pulled the sheets over her shoulder in one movement. She certainly didn't look like she wanted to get up any time soon; not that that was different from any other morning. I stroked her hair; it was so soft and warm. God, I loved her.

"Maybe you can have some chicken when you get home," I said to Blanket as I turned back to her. "Are there chicken shops in Fitzroy Crossing?"

"No," she said. "Are you coming with us? Amanda is going to fly the helicopter again. It's really fun!"

I opened my mouth to say no, that I was going to stay with Sam, but then I remembered the spirits and whatever curse I'd inflicted upon myself. I sighed. I _had_ to go, and Sam was doing okay. It the great scheme of things it wasn't that far away; we could probably be there and back in a single day.

"I think I will come," I told Blanket. "I like helicopters, too. I'm not as good at them as Amanda, though."

Blanket looked serious. "Amanda's good at lots of things," she said. "She's really good at stories!" Amanda telling stories? _That_ sounded like something I had to hear, if only I thought there was an off-chance she'd ever tell one in front of me. "She knows _all_ the Dreamtime stories," Blanket continued while I wandered into the bathroom to wash whatever I could using a washcloth and a hand basin; I wasn't sure if I could get my dressings wet. Blanket climbed out of bed with her panda and came to stand in the doorway of the bathroom. It was unnerving being watched, but she was completely oblivious to what I was doing while she told me all about Amanda. "She even tells the story about the Crocodile and the Barramundi. Grandpa didn't even know that one."

"He just knows a different version," a voice said from the entrance to the room. I didn't think I'd get a prize for guessing who it belonged to, as if the American accent didn't give it away. "But it sounds like your grandpa knows a lot more stories than I do."

I dried myself off and leant out into Sam's room, a towel over the front of me. Amanda was dressed in scrubs, and she had another set which she tossed unceremoniously at my feet.

Ignoring how they were delivered to me, I awkwardly retrieved them and pulled them on in the little bathroom with Blanket standing at the door of it and watching me with interest. I didn't think I was going to get used to that. "You have a lot of bandages," she told me when I was busy worrying about what to do about the fact I had no bra, giving me an idea. There were lots of extra bandages in Sam's room, so I just selected one of the elasticised ones and wrapped it around my chest in lieu of an actual bra. I inspected myself in the mirror; it would have to do.

Amanda made a noise when I walked out. "Channelling your Korean friend?" she asked dryly.

"Oh, my God," that was Sam's voice. I turned around to her, privately grinning. "Shut _up_ already! Is there any part of you that _isn't_ a total bitch?"

Amanda's face hardened. "By the way, the reason the world isn't currently ruled by one Jacqueline Natla might have something to do with this 'bitch'."

Sam wasn't having any of it. "Whatever, none of this would have happened if you'd just told Lara what was going on in the first place."

Amanda looked like she actually might whip out the Bunyip at any moment. "I'm not having this conversation," she said. "Come on, Blanket." Blanket looked back up at me hopefully and Amanda gestured sternly at her. "Come on! Let's get you back home _before Christmas_." She took Blanket's hand, muttering, "And before I kill you both."

"Good luck with that," I told her as she led Blanket out. "I'm difficult to kill."

"Christmas," Sam repeated. "Wow, it _is_ nearly Christmas." She looked over toward me. "And I'm spending it _here,_ I guess. In a muggy hospital with no snow and no Christmas tree. What kind of Christmas is _that?_ I can't even get drunk!"

I watched Amanda go down the corridor, and I could feel my spirits returning. I had to hurry; I wasn't sure what effect a curse had on other people, but I didn't want to experiment on Sam. "I'll think of something," I promised her. "And I'll buy you a camera. I have to go. I love you!"

"Make sure it's Sony!" she called at me as I jogged after the other two.

They must have already gone into the lift, because I couldn't figure out where they were. I checked down a couple of corridors, but I'd well and truly lost them.

That's when I _felt_ it.

I stopped dead in my tracks, frowning. It was that… duplication of me again. The feeling I had when I was around Diane and I…

…Diane had been airlifted to Darwin, hadn't she? I was sure I remember hearing that on the news.

I looked up, my jaw open. She was here, I knew it. I could _feel_ it.

"There you are," Amanda said from behind me, sounding angry. "I didn't think you'd actually—"

I spun around to her and held my hand out. "Give me the stone."

She blinked at me, and then her surprise faded into suspicion. "Why?"

"I'm going to enslave you and get you to kill yourself," I said sarcastically. "It doesn't matter. Besides, _you_ stole it from _me_ , remember?"

She'd emptied the pockets of her dress into a plastic bag, so she reached into it and handed me a leather glove and the stone. "You know what? I don't want to know. Just don't do anything else stupid," she said. "Come on," she said to Blanket, still glaring at me. "We'll wait out on the nice grass."

I put the glove on and the stone into the centre of it, and waited until Amanda and Blanket had left before I followed the awful pulling feeling to its source. Diane was at the end of the corridor, and there were two security guards sitting outside the front of her door. I was wondering how I was going to deal with them, but they just greeted me.

I looked down my front. Of course, I was wearing scrubs!

"Thanks," I said as casually as I could manage with the Slave Stone in one hand. "I'll be here for the next fifteen minutes."

"'Bout time I had a break, I'm dying for a smoke," one of the guys said to the other, and then they wandered off down the corridor. Eat your heart out, Amanda, I thought as I watched them leave. I'm not _that_ bad an actress!

I took a deep breath and pushed the door open, preparing myself for the flood of violent hallucinations that followed as I laid eyes on Diane. They washed over me as I stared at her dozing in her bed, connected to just as many machines as Sam was. There was just _so_ much in the room I could mortally wound her with.

She must have felt me staring at her, because she turned her head towards me and recognition passed over her face. Before she could think of pressing any of the call buttons, I marched over and pulled them out of her reach.

She looked so feeble in a hospital bed, and not at all like the monster the spirits seemed to think she was. She didn't even look like a multi-billionaire. She just looked like a tired, sick, middle-aged woman. There must have been some strong drugs in that IV, too, because she was nowhere near as uptight as she usually was. "Are you going to kill me, too?" she asked me, sounding like she didn't care either way.

My spirits were showing me all the horrible techniques I could use to do exactly that, but I ignored them. It was so odd to think it was her curse that had been the turning point in Natla's rise to tyranny. "Ironically, you saved me. In a round-about way, you saved us all."

"I think you're confusing me with Tim Costello," she said. When it was clear I didn't understand, she explained, "The CEO of World Vision Australia."

I raised my eyebrows at her. On the odd occasion I'd spoken to her she'd been at least civil even if the things she'd been saying had been truly offensive. The sarcasm was a new low. "The curse you put on yourself to stop yourself being used by Natla," I said for clarification. "It helped us figure out how to defeat her, in the end."

"'The curse I put on myself'," she repeated, ridiculing how that sounded. "I run a multi-billion dollar mining company," she said. "That's a big enough curse in itself."

I stared at her. It was clear she had no idea at all about the curse I was talking about. "Then who would want to _protect_ you from Natla…?" I was confused.

She shrugged. "Heaven knows I've dug up a lot of land. Perhaps some bitter local got what they thought would be their revenge on me with some pedestrian curse." She watched me for quite some time while I tried to come to terms with what she'd just told me. "Ironically," she said, repeating what I'd said early, "you saved _me_ , too."

I frowned at her.

"From my brother's constant meddling. I never got a moment's peace, and I now never have to hear his voice again. For that, I thank you."

I couldn't even believe I was hearing that. She was lucky enough to have living family and she _wanted_ to get rid of them? I didn't even know where to start, I didn't. Of all of them, _she_ was the sociopath.

I leaned over her and yanked her wrist from under the sheets. She tried to wrestle it down again, but I was much stronger. "You're unbelievable," I said, thinking about some of the things Macca had said about her. "'Some bitter local'," I hissed at her. "Well, you won't be amassing enemies who want to curse you anymore, not if I have anything to do with it."

Diane had spotted the Slave Stone in my gloved hand by that point, and her lips parted.

I pressed it flat against her palm. "Diane Frost," I said at her frozen, stunned expression. "Listen to me."


	44. Chapter 44

On the way to the airport, Amanda didn't ask me what I'd used the stone for and I didn't tell her. She'd find out eventually, anyway.

Darwin airport had a special area for private aircraft storage, but Amanda had left the Natla Technologies helicopter in the middle of one of the pads. No one had moved it, either. When I asked her about it, she just pointed to the logo on the side and said, "Mining companies can do whatever they want in Australia," she said. "Ironically, despite the fact they're trashing the place, they're the only reason half the people in this state have jobs."

Blanket and I sat in the cockpit while Amanda arranged for it to be refuelled. "Are you excited about going home?" I asked her.

"No," she said, completely seriously. "I wanted to have some more chicken and chips."

I laughed, because what else could I do? She just looked cross. "It's not funny," she said. Amanda climbed into the cockpit in the middle of Blanket's indignation. "Lara is laughing at me!"

Amanda gave me a look as she turned the engine on. "Ignore her," she told the girl. "Bullies just want attention."

I had _never_ in my life _ever_ been called a bully before, and the suggestion made all my hair stand on end. It must have shown in my expression, because the slightest shade of a grin passed over Amanda's face. Her eyebrow flickered, almost as a challenge. I might have had a go at her, if not for Blanket.

Amanda flew a lot further off the ground than I ever had, and it was terrifying to think that I could literally just slide the door open and fall out. I held Blanket tightly to my stomach so much she pressed uncomfortably against my cuts.

"You're hurting me!" Blanket said at one point and struggled.

"I'm sorry," I told her. "I'm just scared you'll fall out."

"There's a harness in the seat behind you," Amanda commented neutrally.

I put us both inside it, and watched the scenery below the helicopter change from wet tropics through red rocky crags to orange sand as we put distance between us and Darwin.

We didn't head straight for Fitzroy Crossing, though; I didn't realise until Amanda was looking out the side window and piloting us much lower to the ground. Even from above, I recognised Windjana Gorge and the devastated mine site. There wasn't much left of it, though. Most of wreckage had been cleared away and there were only a few pieces of machinery left shovelling the debris into oversized dump trucks.

"Good riddance," I said as we pulled upwards again.

Amanda gave me a very thoughtful look. "Did Natla know you could call the Rainbow Serpent?"

" _I_ didn't know I could call it. I don't actually know if it was really me that did. Everything just kind of carried me along ," I said. "Including the spirits."

While she was turning around, Amanda was quiet for a minute or two. "At least you're not taking credit for it for once," she said.

The airport in Fitzroy Crossing looked like an outdoor basketball court than hadn't been maintained in a decade. There was grass pushing up through the asphalt and the wire fence around the perimeter was falling down in several places. Two people had managed to climb through it and set up deckchairs near the helipad, and as we landed I realised it was Macca and Jammas.

"Macca!" shrieked Blanket, and struggled to get out of the harness. When the rotors were slowing down, I opened the door to let her jump out and rush over to him.

The boys stood up from their cheap deckchairs, grinning ear-to-ear. Jammas was wearing an exaggeratedly long Santa-hat with wire through the length of it, and he'd angled it above his head so it looked like an illustration in a Dr. Seuss book. Macca had weaved tinsel thread through his dreadlocks, and the ends of a few of them had small baubles and one or two bells.

"You can't be serious," Amanda said as they wandered up to us, looking very pleased with themselves.

Blanket pulled at Macca's singlet until he lifted her up and put her on a hip. "Can you do my hair like this?" she asked, fiddling with the tinsel thread.

"Sure," Macca told her easily. "Just don't tell your Grandpa it was me, okay?" He walked all the way up to me and put his other arm around my shoulder, hugging me to his side. "The real Lara!" he said. "I can tell because you're not trying to sleep with me."

I scrunched my face up. "Do I want to know what my Doppelganger did to you two?"

They looked at each other. Jammas snorted. "He's full of it. The second you started hitting on him he was like, 'Lara's been enslaved like Old Johnson!' and he wouldn't touch you anyway, because you already said about the spirits."

"I hope she didn't actually hurt you," I told them as we walked back towards the main street where I could see Macca's car parked. Wait... if Macca's car was _here,_ what had my Doppelganger been...? I didn't want to think about it. Any of it, especially when it came to her. "And I hope she didn't hurt anyone else."

"Nah," Macca said. "We spent a whole day locked inside a tourist attraction while it rained torrentially. But it's cool. The police came and got us out after Amanda called them, and then we had our court dates set again for next year." He looked over his shoulder at Amanda and then back at me. "By the way, they breached you for bail, Amanda, but because you called, instead of putting out a warrant they just set a new date in January. I accepted service for you, the summons is back in my car."

Amanda groaned, looking across at me. She knew _my_ reaction to the fact I suddenly had ten thousand dollars less in my account, and I'm certain she could read it on my face, too.

When we'd piled into Macca's people mover and headed off down the road, we drove straight past the hospital. "Aren't we going to see Old Johnson?" I asked.

"The Banuba community took him to back to his house," Macca explained. "There's another elder taking care of him. They're expecting us."

Old Johnson's house was a similarly old, three-bedroom weatherboard on the edge of Fitzroy Crossing. The lawn hadn't been mown in some time, and there was an old couch in the centre of it. Three teenagers were lying all over it with their mobile phones out and were playing some sort of game together on them. All three of them had the same deep brown skin as Blanket.

When we pulled up, none of them even looked up, but an older woman came waddling down from the veranda and smacked one of them in the head on the way past. "Sorry," she told us, extended her hand to shake all of ours. "When the kids get them mobiles out, they forget their manners. I'm Rita. The old boy's inside."

As Rita led us in, I could see the inside the house hadn't fared much better than the yard. There was a jumble of mismatched furniture, toys everywhere and every single room had beds in it. A group of men were playing cards and drinking beer in the kitchen – they did all cheerfully greet us, though – and some kids were busy fighting in the lounge room over the Playstation. Blanket hung around the doorway and shyly watched them. When they saw her, they stopped and said something to her in a language I didn't understand. It didn't _sound_ rude, but Blanket looked quite upset, anyway, and motioned for Macca to pick her up again.

When we got to the back bedroom, Rita stopped us in the doorway. "She can't come in here," the woman told us, looking directly at Blanket. Blanket didn't look any more upset than she had when the kids had spoken to her, she just nodded wearily. I wondered how many times she'd heard that before.

Macca and Jammas shared a glance. "Let's go play outside, Blanket," Macca told her, and then he and Jammas walked back through the house. I could hear someone comment on Jammas' hat on the way through.

No sooner had Blanket left than Rita took a step away from us, recognition showing on her face. "What you girls been up to?" she sighed, and then opened the bedroom door for us.

Old Johnson was lying on top of a child's bed with his bare feet hanging off the end. His chest, arms and forehead had been painted with the same white paste that the dancers had been teaching us about at the blockade. I could see his chest rise and fall; and his peaceful relaxation reminded me of when I'd first seen Sam in recovery.

Amanda had her eyes narrowed at me. I gave her a quizzical look. "What?"

She shook her head and looked back at him. "I know what you meant about what it's like to be around Diane, now," she said. "Or maybe I actually just genuinely want to kill you and it's not the spirits. Have you got the stone?"

"Oh, yes," I said, remembering it was in _my_ pocket. I put the glove on and took it out. "Do you want to do this, or shall I?"

"Good fucking heavens, you two," Rita was saying behind us as we looked at the stone. "What are two whitefellas doing with _that_?"

I twisted around to her. "Taking it off the people who made it and giving it back to Old Johnson," I said. "Believe me, it's all yours."

Amanda put her hands in the huge glove underneath mine and took it from me. "I'd better do it, it needs to be done _right._ "

I let her take it from me and actually manage _not_ to punch her. "I vaguely recall you saying something about it not being possible to un-enslave people…?"

Amanda rolled her eyes. "What do you want me to say? 'I was wrong, Lara, you were right'?"

"That would do it," I told her as she walked up to the bed and knelt beside it.

Gently taking Old Johnson's hand, Amanda placed the stone in it. Nothing happened straight away, it wasn't like the process of enslaving someone where it was immediately apparent you were acting on them. "Listen to me, Old Johnson," Amanda said clearly. "Listen to me. Ignore all the commands you have been given, just like you were never given any. Stop listening."

Old Johnson took a deeper breath as Amanda lowered the stone. Slowly, he opened his eyes. He didn't look confused, or disoriented, or anything that you'd normally expect of something who had been 'asleep' for several days. He just looked tired as he turned his head towards us.

I wasn't sure what to say to him, or if he'd even remember me.

He did. "Them miners gone?" he asked.

I nodded. "Very gone."

He exhaled, looking satisfied.

Rita came bustling through us. "Let's get you up," she said to him, and then they spoke together in that same language that I didn't know.

"Do you understand?" I asked Amanda quietly, thinking that perhaps she'd learnt it at some point during her research.

"There are a hundred and fifty Aboriginal languages, Lara," she said, making me feel stupid again.

"Can you please stop doing that?" I asked her, getting sick of her attitude. "I'm a North-East Asian archaeologist with a specialty in Japan. If we were in Japan, _you_ would be the one asking _me_ questions."

"Hey," Old Johnson said to us once he was sitting upright on the bed. "Give me that thing."

We looked at him. Amanda took a step towards the bed and carefully gave him the leather glove with the stone in the centre of it.

He spent a few moments looking into it with his brow low over his eyes. "How did them twins figure this magic out?" he asked eventually. "Only the right people know _these_ stories." If Amanda knew the answer to that, she neither looked like she did nor said anything when he asked that question. Using Rita for support, Old Johnson stood up and took a few steps. "We need to hide this away," he said. "Before anybody else gets hurt."

When Old Johnson made it out the door of the house and took a big lungful of fresh air, _that_ was something that distracted the teenagers from their phones. "OJ!" one of them called and hurdled over the back of the couch, coming up to us. "You're up!" I had expected him to come up and greet what was probably _his_ grandfather, too, but instead he said, "Can you drive us up to Broome tomorrow? Sarah's cousin's iPad is stuffed. We need to get a new screen."

Rita said something sternly to the boy who rolled his eyes. "Sorry, I'm glad you're okay," he said reluctantly to Old Johnson, and then went back to the couch.

"Kids," Old Johnson told us, just as he spotted Blanket and Macca by the people mover.

Now, Blanket, _she_ gave Old Johnson a proper greeting. As soon as she saw him she _squealed_ , pushed down from Macca and came tearing through the long grass to wrap herself around his legs. "Grandpa!"

He had a big smile on his face as he put a hand in her wild hair. Then, he gave Amanda a look that both of us understood. He hadn't expected to see Blanket, but he was delighted that he was. "I'm glad to see you, girl," he told his granddaughter. "Someone's been taking care of you while Old Johnson was sleeping."

Amanda wet her lips nervously, and looked away. We made eye contact. You were going to kill her, I thought, and somehow he knows. She watched me for a moment, and then looked back at Blanket. Blanket was gazing adoringly up at her grandfather, and Amanda exhaled and took a few steps off the veranda. "Let's get this over and done with," she said.

Rita and Old Johnson had a brief discussion, and Macca came wandering up to us.

Blanket could obviously understand the two elders. "But I don't _want_ to!" she said in English to them. "Macca said he'd get me ice cream!"

Rita put up her hands. "Okay," she said. "Okay. You got get your ice cream. I have shopping to do, anyway."

Old Johnson and Macca clasped hands. "OJ," Macca said, repeating the nickname one of the teenagers had given him. "It's good to see you upright."

Old Johnson laughed. "You still owe me for that performance," he said. "I hear we haven't been paid yet!"

Macca made a face. "Yeah, a lot has happened in the last few days. I'll sort it out. Blanket?" Macca said, holding his hand out to her. "Grandpa has some stuff to do. Let's go get that ice-cream, yeah?"

"Yeah!" Blanket said, easily allowing herself to be separated from her Grandpa's legs by the promise of junk food. Macca looked over his shoulder and winked at us, the red and green tinsel in his dreadlocks twinkling in the sunlight.

Old Johnson watched him go down the path. "He's going to make a good father one day," he observed, and then looked at both of us. Amanda's expression made me laugh.

According to Old Johnson, being 'unconscious' had given him a lot of time to think and reflect about what to do about the spirits. He knew about what had happened and had already chosen a place for them, and he needed to take us there.

Amanda and I couldn't agree on who got to sit in the passenger seat of his pick-up, and after literally twenty seconds of arguing, Old Johnson opened the back tray and gestured at it. "Both of you get on there," he said. "You two are as bad as them kids Rita has."

The road was bumpy and for at least half of the trip, we weren't even _on_ a road. The wheels kicked up loads of orange dust and it wasn't long before Amanda's hair was the same colour as the ground. "This is your fault," she told me sullenly, blinking against something that had lodged itself in one of her eyes.

Old Johnson took us through the crags and canyons and along the river to an enormous gaping cavern. He parked outside the front of it and hopped out, gesturing at us.

"Grab some of those," he said, pointing at the thick foliage of bushes and trees growing along the shadow, slow-moving creek. Amanda and I looked at each other, and then began to pluck branches from them. When we had an arm full of branches each – and were probably completely covered in huge and venomous tropical spiders – we followed him inside.

The interior was as vast as a theatre. There was plenty of natural light inside from the entrance, and it glittered across the cavern floor, half of which was covered with water. The ceiling of the cave sloped up and down like waves. I looked upward into the deep limestone pockets of it and as I did, a cloud of bats descended from the roof and frantically flew past me and deeper into the cave.

"This is Tunnel Creek," Amanda realised aloud. "The oldest cave system in Western Australia. Jandamarra hid from the colonists here. They never found him. Only an Aboriginal tracker could, in the end."

Jandamarra, I thought, touching my stomach where the pigeon spirit usually hid. He wasn't one of the spirits I'd cut – at least, I didn't think he was.

"Where could he possibly hide, though?" I wondered aloud. "There doesn't seem to be anything except a long tunnel."

Old Johnson, who had been walking a little ahead of us through the water, turned around and smiled knowingly. He took one step forward into the shallow creek, and then sunk completely into it.

Amanda and I rushed over to where he'd disappeared, looking down into the water. A nearby rock cast a shadow onto the surface, and no one looking would ever have thought there was anything down there. I took a deep breath, and followed him.

It was a short swim and it only took me a few seconds to emerge on the other side of the rock face. It was also pitch black and I had to feel around the surface with the hand that wasn't full of green branches so I could climb out. Amanda followed me, and I offered her my hand to help her out. She didn't take it.

"Put the branches down over here," Old Johnson's voice said not too far from us. We walked towards it until we found him, and dropped the branches at his feet. He lit a tiny flame – from a cigarette lighter, I think – and held it to the wet branches.

The couldn't possibly burn, could they? They were soaking wet and freshly green. Old Johnson beckoned Amanda over and gave the lighter to her. "Keep burning them." Amanda held the flame to them while Old Johnson retrieved something that must have already been in the hidden cave – a pair of richly decorated sticks.

Then, he started chanting and singing. He had a deep, booming voice – it easily filled up the tiny cave and echoed off the walls.

Immediately, the spirits on my stomach began to glow, and so brightly you could see them through the fabric. Amanda's didn't, though; why was that? Looking at her, I could see she wasn't having any more luck with building a fire than I thought she'd have. All that burning the wet leaves was doing was filling the cave with acrid smoke and it irritated my nostrils.

Old Johnson stopped for a moment. "Step onto the fire," he instructed me. "And put your hands on the wall."

I followed his instructions and he started to sing again. It was hard to stand there. The smoke was filtering up my body into my nose and eyes, and I tried not to cough in case it was disrespectful. In the end, I lost the battle. Once I'd started coughing, I couldn't stop. Bent double against the wall and struggling to breathe I coughed myself half to death in the smoke, with tears streaming out of my irritated eyes. I coughed so much I couldn't hear anything but the sound of my throat rasping and the chanting reverberating off the cave walls.

Amanda actually caught me when I fell over. I think it was by reflex, though, because when she realised who she was holding she just dropped me flat on the cave floor.

I curled up away from the fire, struggling to draw each breath as Amanda let the fire die.

When my eyes cleared and I opened them, the roof of the cave was carpeted with glowing spirits. My soot-covered body was dark and finally still in comparison.

Both Amanda and Old Johnson stood there, admiring the ceiling for a moment as the light ebbing from the spirits settled on their faces and shoulders.

Old Johnson had just been appreciating them all, but he stopped when his eyes fell on the pigeon spirit. There was a secret smile on his face. "I knew this was the right place," he said. "I dreamt it." He took a step towards Amanda, gesturing at the dying branches. "I can try with you, too, but those spirits aren't from here. They don't speak my language."

Amanda shook her head. "I don't want you to try, anyway."

There was genuine concern on his gentle face. "You got some bad spirits, there, girl. You don't want to keep those."

Amanda sighed. "Believe me, I know," she said quietly. "Two to three people used to drown every year in the Wemba-Wemba billabong until ten years ago." She put a hand on her stomach where I'd seen the Bunyip spirit wrapped around her ribcage. "Since then, the grand total of people who have drowned there is zero. It should stay like that. There isn't a safe place to put it."

Old Johnson watched her thoughtfully. "Okay," he said finally, and put a steady hand on her shoulder. Underneath that long beard and heavy brow, there was _pride_ on his face.

It hit Amanda really hard, and she had to turn away from him.

After Amanda and I had left the cave and were waiting for Old Johnson to do whatever he needed to with the Slave Stone – which he wouldn't let us watch – I washed all the soot off me in Tunnel Creek. After he emerged from the cave, I fought with my light-headedness all the way back to the pick-up. My cuts were itchy and uncomfortable; I'd probably managed to fill them with all manner of infection-causing bacteria and abrasive dirt and sand. I was also soaking wet, although the hot sun was doing its best to dry me quickly – and burn me. Discomfort aside, I dozed on and off on the way back to Fitzroy Crossing, my skin still and quiet. I felt unexpectedly alone without all of them, and it was a strange emptiness to get used to again. No one was watching me.

Well, except Amanda. When I opened my eyes she was staring at me, deep in thought. She didn't say anything and I didn't, either. We just watched each other for a few minutes as the vehicle bounced along the dirt track.

Back in Fitzroy Crossing, Macca, Jammas and Blanket had taken the rest of Macca's tinsel to one of the small gum trees out the front of Old Johnson's house. It wasn't much taller than I was, but the amount of tinsel wrapped around it could probably have stretched to the moon and back. Additionally, they'd scissored up some empty beer cans into interesting shapes and they were hung all over it, too.

When Old Johnson had parked in the driveway, Macca made a 'tada!' motion with his hand towards the tree. "Christmas: Aussie style!" he said, showing us two rows of his beautifully white teeth. "What do you think? Blanket helped us decorate it."

"The beer cans were my idea!" Jammas announced when he was sure Amanda was listening.

I looked at the poor little tree. It was sagging under the weight of all the junk on it.

"Fuck," was Amanda's assessment as she held up one of the shredded cans to inspect it. "I need a drink. Is any of that beer left?"

Rita chased the teenagers off the old couch so we could sit on it. Amanda sat on the grass near us as Blanket put a towel around her shoulders and flapped her arms like wings.

"Are you a bird?" Macca asked Blanket as Rita handed us all a can of beer on her way across the road.

I sipped mine and made a face. It wasn't my thing, but since they were being so hospitable I didn't really feel like I could turn it down. Amanda was just so keen on reminding me how little I knew of their culture, and in Japan it would have been rude to hand a drink back. It was too bitter for me to enjoy it, but I drank it, anyway. I _was_ thirsty, and my throat still hurt from all that smoke.

"No," Blanket told Macca. "I just have wings!"

Amanda and I glanced at each other. She must not have told Macca about Natla, because there was no hesitation as he said, "Must be pretty cool to randomly have wings," he said. "Where would you fly to first?"

"To the spirit world," Blanket said, completely seriously. "To visit mum and dad."

"Youch," Jammas said, punching his friend in the arm. "Nice one."

"I had _no_ idea it was going to lead _there_ ," Macca told him, and then said to Blanket. "I'm pretty sure they'd be happy to see you again."

Blanket nodded. "Anyway, I can also make fireballs," she said. "Like this!" She made a movement that looked like martial arts and then held her hand out. The idea had obviously come from Natla, but that movement was something else.

"You've been watching too many cartoons," Amanda told her, sounding disapproving. "And I thought you said you were going to teach me how to play Pokémon. Or are you breaking your promise?"

Blanket dropped her 'wings' by her side, looking aghast. "No!" she said. "But I put my DS inside. Wait here!" she told Amanda firmly, and then ran into the house with the towel billowing out behind her.

We watched her go in.

"Spirituality is central to Aboriginal culture," Amanda said philosophically. I wasn't sure which of the three of us she was speaking to, but it probably wasn't me. "As a dead zone, she can't participate in any of that. She can't even be around people when _they_ are participating in it. It must be hard for her."

"I don't know, she seems like a pretty happy kid," Macca observed as she waved at us through her bedroom window. "Despite everything."

Amanda looked back at the grass. "All of this happened fifteen years too early." The boys were waiting for her to continue, so she did. "Think about it. Two white girls save the world, and it's on _her_ land. She should have been the one to do it. Maybe she will, one day. With that amazing gift."

Old Johnson had come over to us while Amanda had been speaking, and he was grinning. "I like to hear people talk about my girl like that," he said, and offered us a familiar-looking orange-juice container. My stomach churned at the memory of what was in those containers.

"No thanks," I said firmly, not caring if I was being rude. I must not have been, though, because he just laughed at me.

Macca, Jammas and Amanda drank deeply from it, though, and it wasn't long before they were lying on their backs in the long grass while Blanket jumped in between them and told them all random facts about something called 'Eevee'.

I sat and watched them, feeling Sam's absence. She would have loved to be part of this. She'd have been completely smashed and still taking such great footage of Blanket being energetic.

It was late afternoon when just thinking about Sam wasn't enough. I wanted to go and make sure she was doing okay. I stood up from the old couch, stretching. "Come on, Amanda," I said. "We should get moving."

She sat up from the grass, waiting for her head to stop spinning.

"I suppose I'm driving," I said dryly. "Let's go."

Blanket stopped mid-sentence. "You're going?" I nodded at her, and she flung herself around Amanda's shoulders. Unfortunately, it was enough to send Amanda back into the grass. "See!" Blanket said down at her, sitting on her chest. "You can't go!"

I picked Blanket up under her shoulders and put her carefully down beside Macca. Amanda wouldn't let me help her up, but she make it upright, anyway.

"You can't go!" Blanket sounded more upset this time. "We haven't even finished the Christmas Tree yet."

"It's not finished?" Amanda asked, sounding far more sober than she looked. "I think if you put anything else on it, it will fall over." She nearly demonstrated.

Jammas saw a golden opportunity to actually touch her and he was up a lot faster than he should have been able to be with that much alcohol in him. He put his arms around her to keep her upright. She looked less than impressed, but seeing as she wasn't going to stay upright by herself, she tolerated him instead of just pushing him away.

"But we haven't even played Pokémon," Blanket curled herself around Amanda's waist, and stood on the tips of Amanda's boots. " _You_ promised. Are you going to break _your_ promise?"

Macca still hadn't quite made it off the grass, but he was working on it. "She has a good point," he told Amanda. "Plus you have court in a couple of weeks. And, our hotel has lots of floor space." He grinned at her. "Which is good because I'm a big boy."

Old Johnson had been quiet through most of the conversation. "We always got space here," he said, surprising us. "No one wants to sleep in Blanket's room because when she's near you, you don't dream. She'd love to have some company."

"Yeah!" Blanket said, sounding excited again. "You can sleep in _my_ room! I'll show you where!"

Macca squeezed Amanda's arm. "Stay," he said. "We'll get you so drunk you won't realise you're spending Christmas with two ripped bogans and a small magical child."

She smiled for just a second. It came from somewhere private, and then quickly disappeared. "Okay," she said, trying to smother whatever emotion she didn't want to express. "I'll stay."

Blanket _shrieked._ I resisted the urge to put my hands up to protect my ears.

Amanda pulled away from Jammas – much to his disappointment – and reached into her pocket. When she dropped something into my palm, it was the keys to the helicopter. I didn't take my hand away once she'd given them to me, though, I just stood there with it still extended.

That familiar scowl returned. "What now?"

I made a 'gimme' motion. "You breached bail and I have no money," I reminded her. "On me, anyway."

She rolled her eyes. "The Natla Tech credit card is in the helicopter's ID box," she told me. "Limit is two thousand a day, and the pin is all threes." Blanket was jumping up behind Amanda with her arms around the woman's waist. "Also, don't fucking read into this, but part of me is glad you ruined my original plan." She paused. "And the other part of me is never going to get any sleep ever again, I think."

"You're welcome." I couldn't help but smile brightly at her. She didn't return it, but she didn't glare at me, either, as she reluctantly let Jammas help her up the stairs.

Macca and I watched them go inside. "You know what he said to me after she called us yesterday?" I shook my head at him. "'I knew she was doing the right thing, I just knew it'."

I made a face. "She doesn't look that into him, to be honest," I said, putting the keys in the pocket of my scrubs. "I hope this doesn't end in tears."

Macca sighed. "You and me both," he said, turning towards the footpath. "Come on, I'll walk you to the airport, it's just a couple of streets away."

Macca was _drunk_. Not so drunk as to not be able to walk, but if I'd thought he was jovial and open before, I'd not seen anything. I almost didn't need to say a single word, because he filled up all the airspace laughing and chatting completely by himself.

The security check at _this_ airport consisted entirely of climbing through the broken fence. There may have been guards somewhere around, but I certainly couldn't see them.

When we got up the helicopter, Macca came to wish me goodbye. "I can safely hug you now, right?"

I nodded, and he swept me up into an almighty muscle hug. My feet actually left the ground. It was hilarious until I felt his nose and mouth against my neck and felt warm breath on my skin. I must have stiffened, because he quickly put me back down. "Sorry, I didn't mean to seem like I'm hitting on you," he said very openly. "I'm not, it's just been a while and hugging a girl, well, it's bit of a reflex to do that, you know? Not that I'd turn you down if you said you were into it—"

"—It's okay," I said to cut him off before he _really_ embarrassed himself. He was actually quite entertaining; not intimidating in the slightest, despite how big and muscly he was in comparison to me.

He hugged me again but left me on the ground this time and didn't breathe sexually all over my neck. "That homebrew is some serious shit, and on the off-chance I actually remember any of this in the morning, I'm probably going to be mortified. But, hey, you and Sam are both so fucking hot. Sam, like, _whoa,_ you know what I mean? So if you ever feel like you're missing out on something..."

I made a face at him and pulled away. " _Macca_ ," I said. "I thought you weren't hitting on me!"

"I'm not, I'm not," he said, slurring a little. "And probably I sound like some big homophobic fuck right now. I just felt like I'd put it out there. If you're not interested, maybe it'll be a compliment anyway."

"Thanks for the compliment, then," I said clearly, but I was also laughing a little.

"Creepy threesome innuendos aside," he said, trying to sober up. "Something's changed about you. You're much more relaxed now." He considered me for a moment, and then just smiled. "Anyway, you two are great. I hope you'll visit. It's been a real adventure."

I sighed. "It usually is," I said bleakly, and then climbed into the cockpit. "Thanks, Macca," I said, smiling at him. "You're both lovely. I hope things work out, I truly do."

He saluted me, his tinsel twinkling. "Merry Christmas!"

It was early evening when I got back to Darwin, and because Christmas was approaching, all the stores were still open. Hoping I wouldn't be arrested for credit card fraud, I asked the taxi to take me to an electronics store so I could buy Sam the camera I had promised her I would. Not knowing much about cameras, I just bought the most expensive one and crossed my fingers as I went to pay for it. Natla Tech's credit card worked, and the clerk took my details for the warrantee.

On my way back out to the taxi, I noticed another big store lining the edge of the carpark. It was impossible not to notice it: it was covered in fairy lights, flashing candy canes and all sorts of other gaudy Christmas decorations.

There was one thing out the front in particular that caught my eye.

"Wait here a second," I told the driver, and then jogged over to it.

If Macca and Jammas could find ways to celebrate Christmas in hot, dry Fitzroy Crossing, I could definitely do something with Sam's muggy hospital room.

It didn't matter where on the globe we were stuck on Christmas day, Sam was going to get her Christmas if I had anything to do with it.


	45. Chapter 45

I'd never thought about how heavy a real, live Christmas tree was until I needed to carry one under an arm through a scrum of media and paparazzi. I would have used my other arm to push them all out the way, but it was already full of plastic shopping bags. Unfortunately, that meant that everyone was free to shove all their cameras and microphones in my face as I tried to get through the front doors.

They wouldn't shut up, either. "How do you feel about being betrayed, blackmailed and held hostage by your stunt double, Lara?", "Why are you wearing scrubs and why are they so dirty, Lara?", "Now that your house has been burnt down, where are you planning to live?", "Is it true you gave your secret lover Samantha Nishimura one of your kidneys?", "Tell us how you felt after that video of your stunt double was released and people were claiming it was you!", "It must have been absolutely terrifying being held hostage and tortured, Lara, tell us how you survived!"

"Excuse me!" I yelled several times, using the tree to push my way through them through the big sliding doors into the foyer of the hospital. Their voices blended into a hum of frantic shouting behind me.

The receptionist stood up as I walked past. "You can't bring a tree in here!"

"Better call security, then," I said matter-of-factly and just kept walking towards the lifts. The security guard was actually already standing on the other side of the reception counter, watching to make sure none of the media crews tried to actually enter the hospital. He grinned at me as I walked past him with my tree, not making any attempt to stop me.

I could barely fit the tree in the lift, and I had to get in beside a couple of nurses who stopped mid-conversation to gape at me while I crammed it inside the door. I set the trunk of the tree down on the lift floor and tried to press a button to get to the floor Sam was on, but it wouldn't work.

"You need a security pass for the VIP wing," the nurse told me smugly.

No, I didn't, I just needed to time the emergency stop and door open buttons at the right time. I very effectively demonstrated how wrong she was by doing exactly that and then climbing out of the lift with both my bags and my tree.

I got on my hands and knees and looked back down into the lift at the two nurses. "Awfully sorry about the hold-up," I said. "But at least the lift smells nice now."

As I walked past the nurse's station, there was a deep sigh. However, the nurse there didn't actually mention anything about my tree. "Ms. Croft," she said, coming jogging after me. "Where have you been? You're overdue for your antibiotics and a number of other tests, and… what _on earth_ have you been doing?"

I looked down at my scrubs as I kept going up the corridor. They were stained black from the smoke, orange from the soil and green from grass and from pine needles. I supposed I must also have ripped open a set of stitches because there was blood there, too. God knows what my hair was doing, and my hiking boots still smelt faintly of sea-water. It would have been difficult for me to look _worse_ unless I'd been carried back in here on a stretcher.

Of course, I couldn't tell her what I'd _actually_ been doing. "I went shopping."

"Where?" she asked me sceptically, following me and my tree into Sam's room. "In Afghanistan?"

"Lara!" Sam turned over in bed with a _huge_ smile growing across her face. "I know that smell!" She pulled the oxygen cannula out of her nose so she could take a deep breath of it.

I set the tree against the far wall. "Merry Christmas!" I said, and then dumped the shopping bags on her bed. Before I could help her go through them, though, the nurse had taken a firm grip of my arm.

"Ms. Croft," she said, using a stern voice. "I need to take some blood and dress those cuts again before they get infected."

"One moment," I told her dismissively as I shrugged her hand off, wanting to show Sam everything I'd bought. However, Sam was more interested in _me_ , and ended up drawing me into an open-mouthed kiss before she'd even touched the bags.

Her lips were quite dry. "I can't believe you," she said, smiling against my mouth. Her eyelashes tickled my cheek. "And you taste like beer. How did you get a whole tree in a _hospital_?"

"I walked through the front door."

"You," she said, kissing me again. "Are totally _badass_."

"Nothing says 'badass' like buying my girlfriend pretty Christmas decorations," I mumbled into her mouth.

"Ms. Croft." That wasn't the same voice. I pulled away from Sam's mouth and there were two other nurses standing in the doorway. The original nurse stepped forward. "Please, we have lots of other patients here that need attention, not just you."

I winced. "Okay, okay," I said, and let them lead me over to the other bed where they stripped my top and bandages off me while Sam got stuck into the sea of shopping bags.

I watched her through the railing of the bed while the nurses took turns scolding me for the state of my clothes, my dressings and the fact I'd brought a tree into the hospital when it could be full of bugs, pollen and bacteria. No one tried to take it out, though, so as far as I was concerned they could scold me all they liked.

Before they redressed the cuts, they _did_ let me take a shower. My hair was starting to get to a point where the combination of sea salt, dirt and sweat was making it nearly completely solid, so it was a relief to just wash all of that out. Unfortunately, my stitched shoulder started weeping again while I was in there and then I had to endure another round of people fussing over it in the bathroom.

Before I got dressed, one of the nurses helpfully delivered two familiar suitcases into our room, courtesy of the Queensland Police, Cairns. I leant out of the bathroom, trying to pat-dry my stomach in the most gentle way possible, to discover that Sam had put the camera together already.

When she saw me, she dipped the lens immediately as if she was afraid of filming me. I laughed. "It's okay," I said. "They're gone. Old Johnson helped me—" I looked sideways at the nurse. "—sort everything out."

Sam shook her head. "It's not that," she said, and her eyes dipped to my bare shoulder and then back up again.

I had a sudden memory of that _awful_ video and my heart jumped. "Oh, right," I said, a flood of adrenaline washing over me. That mental image was never _not_ going to be shocking. At least now people clearly thought it was my stunt doubt and not actually me; no one ever needed to find out that she was a clone and our features were identical.

"I wonder what's going to happen to her," I said aloud as draped the towel across me and padded across the linoleum floor to my suitcase. The contents were completely jumbled and the lining had been cut; clearly the police had combed our belongings looking for evidence. I didn't care as long as I could find a clean pair of knickers and some shorts. Sam had no idea what I was talking about, so I elaborated. "My _stunt double_."

"Oh." She shrugged. She was still playing with the settings on her new camera with exactly the same enthusiasm as a child who'd just wrapped a toy. "Do you really care? Hopefully they'll just lock her up and throw away the key."

I pulled on the knickers and shorts, and then went and presented my torso to the nurse to fix up. "Lie down on the bed," she told me, and I followed her instructions.

"I don't even know what happens to people when the stone is destroyed," I said, gazing up at the air vent in the ceiling. "Or when the person who they're listening to dies." The nurse gave me an odd look, so I said, "Movie plot."

She an 'ah' shape with her mouth. "I'm going to put your arm in a sling," she told me. "Otherwise I have a feeling you're going to keep using it for things and ripping that wound in your shoulder open. When's the last time we gave you morphine, anyway? It's very deep, doesn't it _hurt?_ "

I thought about that question. "Yes," I said. "But it's no problem, really."

The nurse finished with my shoulder and started just about pouring that awfully smelly antiseptic fluid all over my stomach. "I'm going to insist on a psych consult and some treatment," she said. "Especially after what happened to you."

Sam was peering around the front of the camera, looking for a particular button which she found and pressed. The light metre flashed directly in her eyes. She looked stunned for a second, squinting as she spoke to the nurse. "Good luck finding a pill that treats 'disaster magnet'." I grumbled at her. "What? It's true!"

"Okay," the nurse said, standing back and running her eyes over me in case she'd missed anything. "That's all done. And this time," she held her finger up, "no heavy lifting, _no_ swimming and _no_ drinking alcohol until your bloodwork and liver function are both normal! Just please _relax_!"

From the corner of my eye I could see Sam filming me being lectured. I just looked across straight into the lens. Sam snickered. "Okay," I said to the nurse. "I'll be good, I promise." She left.

T-shirts were too difficult to work out with a sling, so I just put on my other bra and a loose tank-top. My stomach looked really strange because of the amount of gauze and padding over my cuts. I frowned at myself in my reflection in the window.

"Pity we didn't pack any maternity wear," Sam said, smirking. "How many months are you now?"

"It doesn't look _that_ bad," I said, scrutinising my reflection and trying to decide if I should change into bigger clothes. "And if the last few days have taught me anything, it's that I shouldn't have children. Poor Blanket."

"More like, 'Thanks, Amanda'. She's the idiot who got a kid involved in this stuff." Sam broke off a piece of candy tree and was going to eat it, but I rushed over and stopped her before she could put it in her mouth. She scrunched her nose up at me. "Yeah, I know. 'Nil by mouth'." She let me take it away from her. "Anyway, it's not like you'd pack a baby under one arm and an AK47 under the other. I'm sure we could figure it out. And like I said," she put the oxygen cannula back under her nose, "at some point Dad's going to get on my case about children." She gave the camera to me. "Can you get some shots of me like this?"

I accepted it from her and stood a few paces back, trying to figure out the controls myself. Sam lay her head back and closed her eyes. "Do I look really sick?" she asked me.

"Not when you're talking!"

The phone on her bedside table rang and startled her. We both looked at it. "The cops?" she asked me. I shrugged as she answered it. "Hello?" She paused for a moment and then rolled her eyes in the most dramatic way possible and said in Japanese, "Well, I don't have a cell and I've been in surgery, so how was I supposed to tell you? Lara's my next of kin now. Yell at her!"

That could only be one person, and when Sam was arguing with her father, she preferred to be alone. "Back soon," I mouthed, and then took the camera for a little walk.

I shot some footage out some of the windows, taking special care to zoom in down on the paparazzi and media while they all flashed away at me. "Look at all those palm trees," I said to the camera, panning across them and the giant cockatoos crowning them in the twilight. "And I'm pretty sure those monstrous birds are just waiting outside the hospital because what they _actually_ eat is human flesh." I turned the camera on myself. "We're lucky to be alive," I said ominously, and then laughed to myself as I imagined Sam watching the footage.

I ended up walking down the corridor where Min's room was. I stopped for a moment and switched off the camera.

Min's room was quite dark, and for a second I thought she was asleep and was going to walk straight past.

She wasn't. "Hey!" she called, I think hearing me rather than seeing me. "Could you switch on my light?"

"Sure," I said, and felt around the wall, turning it on.

"Lara," she said as I walked into the room. Her hair was doing that thing where it was all in strange shapes again, like when she'd just woken up at the apartment on the Gold Coast. "Sorry I didn't realise it was you, I'm just a bit spun out right now…" She had been holding a piece of paper, but she just folded it up and put it on the bedside table.

"That's okay. Where's Bree?" I asked, looking around the empty room.

"She went to meet her brother at the airport," Min told me. She still looked a little out of it; I wondered if it was the medication again.

I smiled. "Nice of him to come up," I said, wondering what it would be like to have a brother.

She laughed once. "He just wants to cash in on the drama and get some time off work. It's not about me at all!"

I walked up to the side of the bed. Min had a thin sheet over her legs, but the brace went all the way up her ribcage. I'd seen Bree touch it before, and I understood why. It just looked really uncomfortable, there were just so many straps wrapped around her. And what it meant about her back…

"So," Min said, at the bottom of her voice. "Are you into bondage?"

I stared at her for a moment, and then started laughing. It was such an awful situation for her to be in and having her joke about it was _so_ completely unexpected. There was nothing I could do except laugh, and she didn't stop there, either.

"No? _Fuck_ ," she said, with exaggerated emotion. "I hope I kept the receipt for this thing."

When I finally got myself together, she was smiling wryly at me. I put the camera down and took one of her hands at the side of the bed. I didn't say anything straight away. She'd _broken her spine_ and she was messing about with me, anyway. "Bree's right," was what I eventually said. "You _don't_ deserve this."

Min's smiled faded a little, but she didn't look upset. "Who deserves any of the things that happen to them? Sometimes things just happen. That's life."

Her reaction bothered me, and I couldn't put my finger on it. It just didn't make sense. "Why are you so okay with this?" I asked her. "Why are you pretending it's not important? You're _paralysed_."

She took a deep breath and exhaled at length, considering me. "Would it make you feel more comfortable if I was really angry with you?"

"Actually, yes, it would."

"I'm not." Her smile returned a little as she quietly watched me for a few seconds, thinking. "Lara, eighteen months ago I walked away from my job and my awesome flat on Circular Quay," she said. "I threw away most of my clothes and half my furniture, and my brand new car was repossessed just a bit after that. I had no money, no job and my parents basically stopped talking to me. I'm still not out to them. About any of this," she gestured at her short hair. "And at first it was fucking awful. I couldn't get out of bed in the morning; I felt like my life was over and there was no point in anything. And then… then I just kind of slowly realised that none of that stuff matters." She watched me. "Bree matters. My art matters. I haven't lost those." She smiled wistfully. "Lara, I don't care because I haven't lost anything that really matters to me."

My throat constricted. I couldn't imagine what would happen to me if I couldn't use my legs. "How can you not care?" I said. "You won't be able to get a wheelchair in your flat…"

Her eyes glazed over for a moment and that uncertain expression returned to her face. She turned her head over to look at the piece of folder paper she'd put on the bedside table. After a moment of deliberation, she reached over and handed it to me.

I let go of her hand and took it from her. "What's this?"

She looked tense.

I unfolded it. The logo read, ' _BT Superannuation: Your future, secured_.' I had no idea what that meant, but it sounded like some sort of finance or investment fund. I kept reading. " _Dear Ms. Lee_ ," it read, " _We are sorry to hear about your recent accident. However, as per discussion, BT's arrangement with Frost International employees includes generous insurance cover in three areas: Income Protection, Death Cover and Total and Permanent Disability. This cover continues as long as there is a balance in your retirement fund. As you still have a positive balance, you have the default ten units of Total and Permanent Disability insurance coverage and your estimated protected insurance benefit is $580,660, payable in lump sum on approval. The approval process for spinal injuries is generally short so we don't anticipate much difficulty for you. The forms you need to fill in are attached to this letter_."

I thought I understood it, but this didn't say what I thought it said, did it? "What does this mean?"

She opened her mouth and then closed it again, swallowing. When she looked at me, there was so much emotion in her eyes. "It means I don't just need to paint Bree a beautiful big house."

I gave the piece of paper back to her. I think there were more tears in _my_ eyes than hers. "I would have helped you," I said quietly. "I still want to. I'll find a way."

She snorted. "I don't want your money," she said. "That lump sum will buy us a house and then when I've finished grad school I'll work for a living."

"As an artist?" Environmental Concept Art for games…

She smiled. "Yeah." Something occurred to her. "Oh!" she said. "Hey, do you have a phone?"

I looked down at my little shorts and my loose tank top. "No. But I have a camera?" I held it up off the bed.

She made a face at me. "That's no good. I wanted to show you the picture I painted of you. It's in my Dropbox."

"Can't you just tell me?"

She shook her head. "Uh-uh," she said. "You have to see it. I'll borrow Bree's brother's phone when they get here and send you a link. You need to look at it on a really big screen, it's huge."

"Cryptic," I said to her, narrowing my eyes.

"What can I say?" she said, flashing me that charming smile again. "I'm an enigma." She put the letter back on the bedside table and then held her hand out to me. I took it, glancing up at her. She was _handsome_. Could I even say that about a girl? I couldn't be happier than I was with Sam, and she obviously adored Bree, but there was still something about her. "Bree's a lucky girl," I murmured.

"Funny, I was just thinking exactly that about Sam."

I blushed a little. "You know I brought a live Christmas tree up for her?" Min's eyebrows went up.

"Okay, now I'm really jealous. All Bree bought me was a Paddlepop."

I laughed. "And some Christmas decorations. I'm going to do up our room since we'll be here for Christmas."

"I'm moving in with you," Min said. "Forget this 'one patient per room' business."

I paused for a moment. Actually… "You know, that's not such a bad idea," I said. "I'm sure Sam wouldn't mind, she _loves_ company." I thought about the nurses and winced. "Although, all of us _and_ Bree's brother in a room? I'm not sure what the nurses would make of it. I barely got the Christmas decorations through the door."

Min scoffed. "Please, the nurses here are great," she said. "They even asked me which pronouns I wanted to use in the same tone of voice as they asked me what I wanted for lunch. They'll be fine."

It turned out that being in the VIP wing basically meant that everyone said 'yes' to us no matter what we wanted. Getting Min moved in with us was as simple as asking the nurse at the station if it could happen. "It's too late tonight," she said, checking her watch. "But tomorrow morning we could move her."

I couldn't wait to tell Sam what we'd arranged, so I went rushing into her room to find… the Christmas tree already decorated.

I stared at it, and it flashed merrily at me in an array of different colours.

Sam was still in bed, though, and she definitely wouldn't have been allowed up. "How did you…" I walked over to the tree and inspected a shiny bauble.

"Okay," she said, holding her hands up. "I'm not saying it _did_ happen, but I _might_ have flirted a bit with that male nurse before and he _might_ have agreed to ditch his rounds to decorate our tree…"

There was still tinsel in bags on the ground, though. "I wonder who's supposed to hang this lot up," I said, kicking it with my foot. "I don't suppose there are any more janitors or ward staff or whoever for you to flirt with?"

She wrinkled her nose. "I was actually kind of hoping I might be able to flirt a bit with you…"

I experimentally hung a string of tinsel on the branches of the tree and stood back.

It fell off.

"Maybe you should stick to _Tomb Raider_ ," Sam suggested.

Instead, I walked it up to her and wrapped it playfully around her neck. "I arranged to get Min and Bree in here," I said, dropping a kiss on her forehead. "Let Min figure out how to decorate the rest of the room. She's the artist."

"A big empty room with a Christmas tree was getting a bit weird anyway," she said. "And when you leave it's _really_ quiet. The TV only has like four channels. I thought this place was five star!"

I put my arms around her shoulder and watched the Christmas Tree lights cycle through a series of colours.

"I just love that pine smell," Sam said, inhaling deeply. "Christmas!"

I sobered, remembering what memory had prompted me to buy it for her in the first place. "I don't know if you remember," I said. "In Amanda's ship, we were talking about when get—"

"—back home, yeah," she interrupted me. She must have been thinking about it, too. It was creepy when we did that. "Wow," she said, reflecting on it. "I was so out of it, then. I thought I just dreamt all that. Everything is just kind of a big blur."

I shook my head.

Her smile faded and she leaned her forehead against my chin. We gazed at the oscillating lights.

"I really thought I was going to die," she told me. "I was lying there, sure that this was the last conversation I was going to be having with you. Hearing your voice and hearing you talking about our house and Christmas and warm fires… it was so comforting. How could talking about a future we would never have be comforting?" She sighed. "I was just lying there imagining our whole lives, Lara. I went to sleep imagining our future together, and I never expected to wake up. But I did."

I couldn't hug her tightly enough. "There," I said, nodding at the Christmas tree. "That's the start of it, Sam. I'm just sorry it couldn't be at home in that beautiful un-burnt-down house you made for us."

The look Sam gave me stopped my heart. The whole world was in her eyes. "Lara, there's only one thing that makes somewhere home for me," she said, and took my hand.

Outside, the crickets were chirping. The news on one of those four channels was still humming away in the corner; actually, I think my face was on it. God knows what they were saying about me. I didn't care.

None of that mattered at all. I was spending Christmas with everything that did.

* * *

" _Well, June, it's certainly been a very eventful day in Darwin," a newsreader was saying in a broad Australian accent. "Normally we joke about crocodiles wearing hats and clouds shaped like the Prime Minister, but we actually have some real news!"_

" _That's right, Robert," the other newsreader said. "There are two stories making headlines this evening, December 16_ _th_ _. First, of course, is an update on shipwreck survivor and actress Lara Croft and her secret stunt double. The Northern Territory police issued a statement earlier saying that Lara Croft's stunt double – who still refuses to give authorities her real name – has otherwise pleaded guilty to a long series of charges that are still growing! Her charges including burning down Lara Croft's house, shooting her director and secret lover Samantha Nishimura, grievous bodily harm, the murder of mining magnate Sean Frost, theft of private property, a series of firearms offenses and all of the charges relating to kidnap and false imprisonment. The authorities are still considering whether or not they will take into account the woman's clearly delusional psychiatric state in sentencing, but if you ask me, Robert, I don't care where they lock her up, as long as they do!"_

_Robert nodded shortly. "As if that wasn't enough news by itself! What's the other story, June?"_

" _Well, in a very strange turn of events, mining magnate and 'ice queen' Diane Frost has fronted the cameras at her hospital in Darwin to announce a new direction for Frost International. She says nearly dying in the torrential floods at the Kimberley Diamond Mine made her realise the damage mining does to the beautiful Australian wilderness."_

" _Wow,_ the _Diane Frost said that?"_

" _That's right, Robert. She's going to, and I quote, 'change to ecologically sustainable processes that involve complete consultation with and employment of the local indigenous communities, and dedicate all the future profits of Frost international to wildlife and cultural conservation in Australia.' Apparently this is all in memory of her beloved brother who she misses dearly: Sean Frost. We'll hear that speech from the grieving sister herself after the weather. Over to you, Robert."_

" _Thanks, June. I know all of you are just waiting for the forecast for Christmas Day, and I'm not going to surprise you by telling you one thing: it's going to be hot, hot, hot…"_


	46. EPILOGUE

The wind was up when we turned into our property in Surrey. All the trees were completely bare of leaves and swayed wildly over the driveway as we drove along it. It wasn't snowing yet, but the night had a bite to it and the clouds above us were deep and full. There was palpable tension in the air; any moment now, the sky would open up and blanket the countryside with fresh snow.

After having spent a month in stifling Australia, I felt the cold more than I usually would have. I wrapped my scarf even more tightly around my neck as I looked out the window.

"God, I _know_ ," Sam said, trying to turn the heater in her car up and then discovering it was on the hottest, strongest setting. "It's like not even the super, ridiculously overpriced heater in a BM is a match for this winter. I don't know how we're going to go if we get snowed in."

I smiled wryly at her. I wasn't very concerned. "I think being snowed in our own house, even if it's in ruins, will be the _least_ of what we've survived."

She laughed once. "Don't we always say it'll be something that this that ends up killing us, though?" she said as we rounded the thicket blocking our house from the road. "Defeat evil demi-God: check. Survive being exsanguinated: check. Survive being enslaved, possessed, cloned and arrested: check, check and check. Return from vacation in _Australia_ to die in own boring country- _-shit!"_ Her tone changed.

As she was talking, our headlights touched the building and I could see huge blue tarpaulins stretched over one whole side of the house, from roof to floor. There was police tape everywhere and in the frozen mud on the approach there were just so many boot prints. One side of the house looked like it might be salvageable; scaffolding had been put over it, I suppose to make it safer for forensics to enter and take whatever they needed. Just before the tarpaulins, though, I could see part of the roof had fallen away and what was left was blackened. All in all, I wouldn't have said it was actually in _ruins_ , but it was ruined.

It was just such an awful shame.

Sam stopped the car and we just stared at it in the headlights for a minute or two.

I looked across at her. Her eyes weren't sweeping across the building like mine had been; she was just staring at it. She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. "You should have seen your face when I first showed it to you, you _lit up,"_ she said quietly, and then shook her head. "Just... fuck Amanda. Fuck her. I don't buy that 'I had to' bullshit. No one _has_ to firebomb someone else's house. Especially not after they put so much work into it..."

I put a hand on her knee. "I wish you'd just told me everything."

She sighed. "We'd been together like two months. It would have been weird."

"We've been inseparable for years."

She smiled at that. "I know…" she said. "And it's not like I didn't take more than fifteen hours of footage of every tiny detail and we can't recreate it all." I raised my eyebrows at her, and she looked defensive. "Hey, I'd spent ages trying to get it exactly right!" Her smiled faded as she remembered something. "At least _that_ footage is safe, though. Not like the stuff I lost of the ship when your Doppelganger shot my camera."

I made a face. "Would it have been that interesting, anyway? A ship with some armed men in suits and me yelling at you while the video constantly cut in and out?"

She shrugged. "I probably could have cut _something_ out of it, especially with all those clones and your Doppelganger," she decided, sighing. "But I guess you're right. You kind of had to be there and be part of the action for it to be interesting. Besides, you were _totally_ out of it. I went over some of the footage in the hotel room in Cairns, you looked _terrible._ All washed out and pale. And you kept yelling at me."

"Thanks," I said dryly, and then looked back at the house. I was keen to find out if there was _anything_ left of my collection of historic texts. "Come on, let's go inside see what the damage is," I said as I climbed out of the car and Sam, predictably, went straight for her camera.

She was still moving quite slowly and carefully as she stood up and closed the car door. Even though she kept telling me she was fine, I kept worrying that she was going to rip the wound right open again whenever she so much as sneezed. Every time she reached for her stomach my heart sped, and I worried so much that one night I woke up and there was a shadow in the fabric on her nightgown. Even though I knew it wasn't blood, everything just came _rushing back_. I'd had to go sit in the en suite to the hospital room with the light completely on.

Sam seemed okay, really. She couldn't remember much of it at all, and that was the greatest blessing she could have received. For me, however, the whole chain of events was preserved in crystal clear, full HD as if it had been recorded on that camera of hers. Her expression when I'd shot her, the complete peace and acceptance as she'd been dying, the waves of the ocean thick with the shapes of the spirits crashing and washing over the deck, my fingers around Bree's slender throat as Min _writhed_ on the bedroom floor of that empty house, the flood of emotion I'd felt as that RFDS plane had landed on the highway... I couldn't forget any of it. I _shouldn't_ forget.

"Like, I know the masonry looks pretty cool, but it's probably not _that_ cool," Sam said softly, gingerly putting a hand on my shoulder. I'd been somewhere else and when she touched me, I panicked even though she had gloves on and even thought the spirits had been gone for weeks. The red LED on the camera was flashing.

I groaned at it. "Now there's some compelling telly," I said darkly to the lens. "You can film ten minutes of me staring at a stone wall."

"It's all in the soundtrack," she said. "You can stare at the stones and I'll play…" She tapped her chin in thought. "Well, I could play a really strong, inspiring piece of music like you're preparing for all the revenge you're going to get. Or, I could play something tragic like the Lacrimosa and you're mourning the house."

"You can play either of those when you film my reaction to what happened to my poor books," I told her, pushing the tarp aside and stepping through the doorway into the house. I turned on the flashlight app on my phone.

The ground floor had always been stone, but now it was stone coated with a thick layer of ash and spent coals. Stepping onto it was like walking into a moonscape. The kitchen and all the fixtures were completely gone, now just chunks of cold charcoal and swept into the corner of the downstairs room. An assortment of glass and crockery was peppered in amongst them. When I looked up I could see through the collapsed ceiling into the second and third bedroom and, beyond them, at the steep tarp covering the roof. If there had been furniture in those rooms above the front door, it was only ash now. I supposed I was lucky it was all cheap rubbish, anyway.

As I approached the other side of the living room, I passed scaffolding and a couple of charred pieces of furniture including my horribly ugly couch which had been begging to finally be allowed to rest in peace for years. It looked like it was going to have its wish granted at last. On the far wall there were still a couple of paintings – stained with soot but definitely intact – and our beanbag also seemed to be in one piece.

I kicked it with my foot to see if it would just fall apart.

"I told you it was fire retardant," Sam said, sounding smug as she filmed it. "And _you_ said I shouldn't have spent five hundred on a beanbag."

"Great," I said, rolling my eyes at her camera as I made a beeline to the stairs to investigate the state of my books. "Now whenever you buy something expensive all I'm going to hear about is this beanbag."

I'd put the boxes with my big old books in the tiny room under the stairs, and the stairs were inset stone. Despite, that, though, the door to them was wooden and it had fallen off its hinges. I slowly angled my phone towards the boxes, terrified of what I was going to find.

As the light fell on them I had to double-take. They looked... fine? Frightened I was just getting my hopes up for nothing, I rushed up to them to get a closer look, brushing a thin layer of ash from on top. I coughed as it plumed in the air. The boxes were stained and some of the packing tape had bubbled and curled from the heat. But they were made out of cardboard, and if they were safe, my books were safe inside.

They were literally the only thing I couldn't readily replace, and they were _all fine_. Roth's atlas, my father's journal, all my rare Japanese texts – all somehow preserved. I almost couldn't believe it, not after everything else that had gone wrong. And to think I'd just put them under the stairs in case it rained and the roof leaked…

"Maybe I should give you some time alone with your books," Sam said, chuckling to herself. "It looks like you're having a moment."

"I am," I said, gently touching the box in front of me.

Sam came up behind me and put one arm around my waist and her chin on my shoulder. I leaned my head against hers.

It was an odd moment, though; I'd spent so long worrying about losing them and trying to protect them from various elements. I even used to close the blinds at home so their bindings didn't fade. I'd worried and worried about them ever since we'd got the news about the house and been petrified I'd come back to the house and they would all be ash coating the floor, too.

The thing was, now that I was standing right here looking at them, I felt nothing. They were just boxes of old books, and my life would be no different if they _had_ burnt. Dad would always still have been my dad. Roth would still have always been there for me after Dad had disappeared. Losing the books didn't magically make Roth and Dad vanish as if they'd never been important to me, and it wouldn't have changed my future. I understood what Min meant when she said she suddenly realised things she thought were important actually weren't. The books weren't what mattered to me. Not anymore.

"I'm happy for you," Sam said as I stared at the boxes, no trace of humour in her voice. "Seriously, I know how much they mean to you. I'm glad they're okay."

I turned my head toward Sam, and pressed my lips against her forehead. I knew what _did_ matter to me now. "I'm glad _you're_ okay."

I heard her draw a breath and I could feel her smile against my cheek, thrilled. Even now, it gave me butterflies. God, I _loved_ her. I loved her, and I'd brought her back home as a living, breathing person. Someone who could joke and be silly with me, someone who could hug me and comfort me, someone who could gush for hours about reality shows I didn't care at all about. Not as a canister of cold ashes to bury under our fallen dream house.

I turned towards her, pushing the camera gently away and wrapping my arms around her. I kissed her, properly. Nearly losing her had made it all feel so different; every kiss felt special, something to be treasured. I loved the way her lips felt on mine – even if she was wearing far too much lip gloss – and how she moved against me and the little noises she made. It all felt new again.

There were tears in my lashes. I was just so lucky to still have her.

I didn't notice how heavily I'd been leaning on one of the boxes until it slid off another and fell down behind the stack of them. Startled, we looked at it. Sam actually looked a little worried, like I might be upset about it falling.

That was really the last thing I cared about while I had my arms around her. "They'll be okay."

"Who are you and what have you done with Lara?" she joked, wiping her mouth because I'd pushed her lip gloss all over her chin.

"Really, though. They're just books," I said, but despite saying that I _did_ lean down and strain to pick up the box and carefully re-stack it.

She snorted, not buying my new apathy. "Sweetie, please. If for some reason you had to choose between me and the books I know I'd be on the next plane." She kissed me lightly and then stood back. I guessed our moment was over. "Here's hoping my tech stuff fared as well."

As it turned out, it hadn't. It had been upstairs and probably hadn't burnt in the initial fire, but when the ceiling had collapsed it had fallen into the laundry and spilt everywhere. Some of it had even melted on the hot stone floor.

"It looks like an abstract sculpture," Sam observed, panning over the technicolour devastation. "We'll call it 'Camera Girl's Worst Nightmare'." I watched her carefully to try and tell if she was actually upset. She wasn't. "Oh, well," she said. "It was about time to replace half of it, anyway."

She gave the camera to me and I held it toward her while she picked through some of it. "I think this used to be an HDMI cable," she said, holding up a rock-solid grey blob that looked like a coiled snake. It was plugged in to something red, but whatever it was was so misshapen it was impossible to discern what it used to be. Even though all of these things belonged to Sam, she had no idea, either. "It's just such a mystery I kind of want to keep it," she said, standing up and looking down at it in her hands. "We can put it on the mantle over the fire and visitors can try and guess what it was before Amanda redecorated."

While we were walking out of the laundry, Sam trod on something and then as soon as she spotted what it was, bent and excitedly retrieved it. "Yes!" she said with a fist pump. "Look!"

She held it at me, expecting me to be excited by it. I might have been if I'd had any idea what it was.

At my blank stare, she laughed. "It's a mini projector!" she told me, brushing the ash off it and taking her iPhone out of her pocket to connect them. "You stick it on your iPhone and you can watch movies and TV and stuff." She switched it on and a light shone on the far wall. "Yes, it _still works_!"

I nodded slowly. "Hooray, we're saved?"

Sam ignored my mild sarcasm. "Okay, I have a crazy idea," she said, smiling broadly at me. "You want to camp here tonight? Like, I brought a whole stack of bedding and stuff, and the other side of the living room is probably safe…"

"Sam, it's _freezing_ ," I said. "And you've only just recovered from a life-threatening injury, you want to add hypothermia to that?"

She scoffed. "You should see the duvet I bought," she said. "It's _really_ thick and really nice."

"And about to be covered in soot," I said as she dragged me, laughing, back out to the living room. She took us over to the beanbag.

"We can sleep in it," she said, picking it up and trying to shake the ash off it. "Like we did the night before we left for Australia. And I'll rig up a sheet over this wall and we can project video onto it. It'll be fun!"

There was no talking Sam out of it, and the only way I could stop her from doing all the bending and stretching she wasn't supposed to be doing was to do it all for her. In the end, we set up the beanbag and the duvet opposite the far wall and hung a sheet over it. I watched Sam fuss over the settings on the projector with a big smile on my face. It was all just so ridiculous; I loved it.

"Tada!" she said when she was able to get it to focus. I clapped appropriately. "Now, _please_ tell me you've got some videos on your cell because I haven't, and the data reception out here is probably too crap to download anything from my Cloud before _next_ Christmas."

"I might," I said, trying to remember what I'd put on there. We settled down in the beanbag, wrapping ourselves in the duvet. "God, I can't believe we're doing this. Our house is _half burnt down_ and it's the middle of winter."

"And you can believe all the other things we've done?" Sam asked, cuddling up against me and looking over my shoulder as I tabbed through my phone.

I pretended to hide it from her. "Hey, I might have private photos on here!"

She laughed. "Oh, please. If you had 'private photos' they'd be from me, anyway."

While I was tabbing through my media, I scrolled past an image titled " _Remember I said big screen_ ". I lifted my finger and stared at my phone for a moment, trying to figure out where I would have—Oh, that's right, _Min._ That must have been what she'd called the email attachment of her painting. I grinned.

"What's that?" Sam asked. "Why aren't you selecting it?"

"It's from Min," I said. The look she gave me… I remembered the conversation we'd been having a moment ago. "Oh, no, no, no!" I said hurriedly. "It's nothing like that. It's just that painting she said she was going to do. She asked me not to look at it unless it was on a really big screen."

Sam still looked a little suspicious. "Is it any good?"

I shook my head. "When would I have had a big screen?"

Sam rolled her eyes at me. "Of course _you_ wouldn't even peek," she said, and then reached around me and selected it, moving my hand up so the projector pointed towards the sheet. "This qualifies as a big enough screen, right? A whole wall?"

It must have been a _huge_ file, because it took ages to load. When it did, I understood why she had said it needed to be a big screen. It filled up the whole sheet. Even though it was projected onto fabric, I could see every inch of contained as much detail as a photograph, all in tiny strokes like an oil-painting.

It was a deep cavern and there was a person standing in the centre of it with a burning torch. The figure was small compared to the enormous cave, but in the detail I could recognise it as me from behind, wearing my cargos and a black t-shirt. She'd even put my fringe behind my ears the way I always tucked it. I was gazing upwards at the vast ceiling of the cave, bathed in an orange glow and standing as if I was gaping in awe.

The glow was coming from the roof of the cavern where _whole constellations_ of spirits were spread across the rock; it took up half the picture in a vast network of colour and design. I recognised some of the shapes from when they were on my body, but Min had been careful to make small alterations to them so they weren't replicas of the real creatures. The surface of the rock around me danced with shadows and light, and it faded to black by the bottom of the canvas.

The whole scene was just so epic. It was like the set of some big budget Hollywood adventure movie with top-notch special effects.

"Wow…" Sam said beside me, and then held her hand out. "Can I…" I gave my phone to her and she zoomed in on a few areas; you could see every stroke. "Just, wow," she said eventually. "Can you imagine trying to build that set? That's _huge_. I think two or three million, at least. And that's without the CGI."

"I suppose that's why she wants to be a _game_ concept artist," I pointed out.

"I hope your computer has a good graphics card, then," Sam said, giving my phone back to me. "Because that is a _big_ environment, like a whole level, and it's just in one area."

It _had_ been a big network of caverns, I remembered that from running around in it. The firsthand experience was amazing, it was a pity we couldn't actually show people like we had in _Tomb Raider_. It would be such a compelling story. Not just the caves, but the ship, Frost International Headquarters in Sydney… all of the places we'd been. I wondered which parts people would be interested in. What would the plot be? Another corporate CEO bites the dust?

Something Sam had said earlier came back to me. ' _You kind of had to be there and be part of the action for it to be interesting_ ,' she'd said. Looking at the vast painting of a video game level in front of me, I wondered if they could be.

Maybe Sam didn't have the footage of everything that happened anymore. Maybe she didn't _need_ to have it. Maybe writing papers and making videos wasn't the only way to engage and educate an audience, as Professor Chamberlain so eloquently put it.

"Sam," I said, the idea only just solidifying in my head. "Did you find out if your family owns any game-related companies?"

She shook her head. "We don't. I emailed Dad and he said no, but he wanted to know why."

I thought about all the money Natla had paid me. I could never spend it all on myself, not in a lifetime. "I wonder how difficult it is to start one," I said. "And make a video game."

Sam looked from me to the painting. "You want to turn all of this stuff into a video game?"

I winced. "Well, not _all_ of it," I said. "But don't you think it's a great way to get people into the story? To actually be part of it, like you said before?"

She thought about it. "I don't know much about games," she said. "I mean, these days they're full of videos and stuff, but a lot of that's done by motion capture…"

I was already getting excited. "Think about it, Sam," I said, "You couldn't film any of the spirits, but you wouldn't _need_ to if it was all animated. We could show the whole thing, all of the important parts, without you needing to do clever things with the camera."

"Hey, I like my 'clever things'," she told me, but she was smiling. "Honestly, I really don't know much about games, but you're totally adorable when you're excited."

I pushed her. Gently, though, I didn't want to tear those stitches. "I'm serious."

She laughed once. "I know you are," she said as she thought about the idea herself. "Some of the footage I still have we could cut as part of the advertising campaign leading up to release, like, 'come be part of this adventure that _actually happened'_. People wouldn't have to watch you, they could _be_ you. All your fans will wet themselves. _Bree_ will wet herself."

I relaxed back in the beanbag, grinning up at the smoke-stained ceiling above us. I couldn't get the smile off my face: it was a _great_ idea. And on top of being a great idea, Min could do all the concepts for it. Genuine, honest work she wouldn't refuse. It was something I could give her without it feeling like charity. I had to text her. Now.

I held my phone up. " _Hey,_ " I typed, _"hypothetically, when do you finish art school and when would you be able to start work_?"

Sam had her head on my shoulder. "Would you put the studio in Australia?" she asked me. I hadn't got that far yet, so I just shrugged.

My phone buzzed and I swiped it immediately. " _Middle of this year,"_ Min had replied. " _Guess you saw my painting :) Like it?"_

Sam snorted. "You should tell her that you're practically pregnant by it."

I didn't. " _It's brilliant. So you could start work in July?"_

" _Why, you got a lead for me? If you just want a commission I'm always open. And because you're so cute I'll do it for free ;)"_

Sam made a noise went to snatch the phone from me. I held it just out of her reach. " _We might be in the video game business after all…_ " I typed, ignoring Min's winky face. " _Or we soon will be._ "

There was a pause before the next message arrived. " _Show me where to sign."_

I put the phone down and beamed at Sam, who was still giving me a look as she said sternly, "That settles it: the studio's going in Australia, and you're staying here in England. And by the way, you're _my_ cute."

"Completely," I said, and then let her kiss me again to prove it. She didn't stop at kissing, either. It wasn't long before she was straddling me, sitting heavily across my hips with one of her hands inside my jumper. It felt good and it was so comforting just to be able to touch her and feel her, but she shouldn't be doing anything like this. Not for at least three weeks. "Sam, you're not supposed to—"

She pressed her index finger on my lips. " _I'm_ not supposed to," she said with a cheeky grin, and then very deliberately undid my belt. _That_ got me going. I flopped my head over the back of the beanbag as she unzipped my cargos and slid her hand down between my skin and my knickers. Her fingers were warm and I was very obviously completely ready for them.

"Oh, yeah," she murmured my ear. She relaxed against my side to kiss my neck as her hand set to work.

 _Sam_ , I thought as I lay there, smiling and excited about our future. _Sam._ I still had her. She was here with me, and that was her hand. I turned my head towards her so I could kiss her and her tongue slipped against mine briefly. I stopped mid-breath. It almost wasn't enough for _me_ to be breathing like this: I wanted _her_ to be breathing like I was while _my_ hand was squished inside those horribly tight jeans of hers. I wanted those hips to be bucking into me, her face scrunched as I brought her to where I wanted to take her. I wanted to be doing all of it together with her, in unison, each of us lost in each other and lost in the feeling of it.

And soon I would be able to do it any time we wanted, because Sam was alive and she was here with me.

That was what I imagined as Sam finished me off and I pressed myself completely against her, indulging in lazy, open-mouth kisses.

When I lay back again and Sam had done up my trousers, she settled down against me and sighed.

"Are you okay?" I murmured. I didn't want to open my eyes. Actually I probably could have gone straight to sleep at that point.

"No," she said, and that made me open them, alarmed. "I'm _so_ wet and there's nothing I can do about it."

I laughed with relief. "I thought you were going to say you were bleeding again,"

"This pain is _way_ worse," she joked. "Trust me."

I kissed her. "I want to help," I said. "But I have a feeling if we keep talking about it and I keep kissing you, I'm only going to make it worse."

"Sweet torture," she said, and then tried to keep kissing me as I pulled away.

I bumped noses with her affectionately, instead. I'd been sweating a little while we were going at it, and now that we were relaxed I was a little bit cold. "I think I'll start a fire. What do you think?"

She raised her eyebrows. "I think you're three and a half weeks too late to roast marshmallows on this place."

I sat up and twisted to face the fireplace. It was made of bricks, surely it was fine? I looked over my shoulder at the debris swept into the corner of the kitchen. Some of that would probably burn, and the wood was, for the most part, untreated. Sam saw where I was looking. I winced at her. "It's only going to get taken to the tip anyway, isn't it?"

She laughed at me. "I can't take you anywhere," she said as I got up and went to lift some of the wood out of the piles of rubbish.

I laid it all out ready to be lit, but had a thought before I did. I should probably check to make sure the chimney was clear so I didn't suffocate us. "Hand me your phone?" I asked Sam, who obediently put it in my hand. "I'll just check it's not damaged."

I turned the light on and shone it up the chimney.

As I did it, Sam's breath caught in her throat. I didn't think anything of it – perhaps the angle my body was bent in to look up there was making things worse for her – until I saw something glint off a tiny alcove in the side of the chimney. It looked like a little box.

I looked across at Sam. She had a strange, unreadable expression on her face in the light of the projector. When we locked eyes, though, she couldn't smother a smile. Was that… anticipation?

"Do you know about that?" I asked her, expecting I already knew the answer.

"Maybe," she said cryptically.

I narrowed my eyes at her, and then stood up inside the cramped flue. To reach the alcove, I actually had a climb a little up the inside of it and by the time my fingers closed over the box, I'm pretty sure most of me was black with soot.

I dropped down into the fireplace, ruining my little nest of kindling, and bent double to step out of it. I walked over to the light of the little projector, looking curiously at the little object in my hands. It was porcelain and the enamel on it was very reminiscent of designs used in the Kutani Kilns in nineteenth century Japan. Semi-valuable Japanese artefacts didn't just turn up randomly in Southern England, that much I was certain of.

I raised an eyebrow at her. She was smiling ear-to-ear, all wrapped up in the duvet. It was a very sweet image. "You hid a Kutani Dish in the _fireplace_?" I asked her. " _Why?_ "

Her eyes twinkled. "The original plan was to leave you a series of clues over months or years until you eventually found it," she explained. "I spent ages trying to figure out exactly how I was going to do it. Pity I had to go and blow the surprise while I was bleeding out."

I watched her for a moment, and then shook my head. "Sam, you never told me what the surprise was. Just that you had one."

Her lips parted a little. I could practically see her heart lift in her chest. She was breathless, suddenly. "Open it, then."

I looked from her to the box, and then lifted the delicate lid. It was too dark for me to see what was in it straight away, and as I held it toward the projector, the first thing I saw was the deep orange-gold sheen that I recognised from Amanda's pen and the Midas statue in St Francis' Folly. Then, I saw what it was in the shape of.

Two rings.

"It's the gold I saved from Greece, I had it reshaped. You weren't supposed to find them for years," Sam said. "I know we're really young and we've been together like four months. They don't have to mean anything…"

I could hardly hear her; I was still just gaping at them.

All I could think of was how pale and cold she'd been when she'd told me that she had a surprise for me; the surrender in her while she'd talked about our future despite knowing that she was dying. Our Christmases. Our adventures. Our family. She'd planned it all.

God, and I'd nearly lost her. Again and again, I'd nearly lost her. Every time I realised that I might, my world closed in on itself and I couldn't imagine what I'd do without her, or even who I'd be without her. She was already my family, and I didn't want any sort of future without her. In almost every meaningful way, I was already hers.

In all except one.

My voice shook as I spoke. "Sam, what if I _want_ them to mean something?"

Immediately, her eyes swam. As she watched me, her jaw was so tight with emotion and she could hardly speak. "Okay," was all she could manage. "Okay."

I didn't end up lighting the fire; I didn't need to. The house could probably have collapsed around us at a moment's notice and it was snowing so heavily outside, but we didn't care. We didn't care about anything else. We just lay wrapped in each other's arms, rings on each other's fingers, laughing and crying until we finally fell asleep.

In every way, I was hers.


End file.
